The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has released its report on the RTÉ controversy – containing some 21 recommendations, including the headline finding that the broadcaster should be returned to the remit of the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG).
This step now seems a foregone conclusion – supported by both the Government and Opposition, and it will give the PAC a standing role invigilating RTÉ.
So, while its current role examining the controversy now appears to be drawing to a close, the broadcaster can expect close marking from the committee going forward. Expect those meetings to become a fixture of the political calendar.
In truth, many of the report’s recommendations are not earth-shattering – but as several committee members pointed out during Tuesday’s launch, that in and of itself is an indictment of previous practices at the broadcaster.
Labour TD Alan Kelly pointed to recommendation four, which says that all invoices issued by RTÉ should be clearly and accurately labelled as to the goods and services in respect of which they are issued – after a payment to Ryan Tubridy was incorrectly labelled as “consultancy services”.
He asked: “What level are we starting at here?”, saying many of the recommendations are “fairly baseline”. Cormac Devlin, the Fianna Fáil TD for Dun Laoighaire said the same recommendation was “very basic – Anne and Barry-like, almost”.
In truth, much of the most meaningful language in the PAC report is contained in its conclusions, rather than the recommendations, where the committee was less constrained in what it could say.
It is in the conclusions where the report finds that a vital note of a meeting which ultimately approved the payments to Mr Tubridy suggests “an attempt to circumvent normal regulations and procedures on the part of RTÉ and to conceal the purported underwriting of the contact and payments to Mr Tubridy”.
The report also concludes that the note “appears to refer to a commitment by then Director General Dee Forbes to guarantee certain payments to Mr Tubridy”. Ms Forbes has so far been unable to counter this assessment as she has not come before the committee, nor the Oireachtas Media Committee.
Arising from the inaccurate publication of Mr Tubridy’s earnings, the report questions whether RTÉ may have deliberately misrepresented its list of top earners, which was always a lightning rod for criticism of the broadcaster.
It takes the opportunity to assert in the conclusions that the use of the barter account matches the dictionary definition of a “slush fund”, and gives voice to its clear frustrations around the failure of Breda O’Keeffe, the former chief financial officer who left with a package of €450,000, to appear before it, saying: “The Committee is of the belief that Ms O’Keeffe’s refusal to attend frustrated the work of the Committee in resolving certain conflicts of evidence presented to it.”
The report has real value in gathering a huge amount of evidence relating to the diffuse threads of the scandal, and compiling it into the a single document – including detailed timelines and a compendium of relevant source materials.
However, it is up to the broadcaster to show it has transformed itself from the organisation described in the report, and one that is ready for tighter oversight that will last for years.
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