Taoiseach Leo Varakdar has said he cannot rule out the possibility that some of the payments made through the RTÉ barter account may have been on the wrong side of the law.
Speaking as he arrived at an EU summit in Brussels, Mr Varakdar said: "I don't think we can rule out the fact that it's not just a case of irregular payments, that some of these payments may have been on the wrong side of the law. But I don't want to jump to that conclusion."
The Taoiseach said it was not unusual for a corporation to entertain clients.
However, he said: "The fact that it was so untransparent, even concealed, that payments were made for work that perhaps wasn't done. That's much more serious, I think, and is a matter of real concern."
He said he was "not sure" the situation had reached a point where gardaí might need to be involved.
"It did concern me to hear that payments were - or it would appear anyway - that payments were made by RTÉ to outside contractors for work that wasn't actually done."
Read More:
RTÉ performance at PAC criticised as 'the worst'
What we learned: Barter account, top 100 and 'talent'
RTÉ controversy: The PAC aftermath and the next steps
He added: "That does raise issues in terms of accounting rules, and company law. But I think we're not yet at that point."
The Taoiseach said RTÉ faced issues on how it managed its accounts, given the revenue streams that were both public and commercial.
"[RTÉ] receives public money from the licence fee and other sources and receives commercial money from advertising and commercial partners and that all goes into the one pot.
"I'm not sure that's going to be appropriate going forward. I know, as someone who's a trustee of a political party, we have to keep the public money separate from the money we raise ourselves, we have to produce separate accounts. And I'm wondering, might it have been better if [RTÉ] operated on that basis."
The Taoiseach urged caution on the question of RTÉ waiving legal privilege over documents sought by the Public Accounts Committee.
He told reporters: "That does depend on circumstances. Legal privilege is there for a reason and does need to be protected.
"I don't know the exact circumstances that are there, but individuals, companies, governments use legal privilege because if you're involved in a court case if somebody's suing you, and the fact that you're forced to release all your documents and the other side isn’t, puts you at an enormous disadvantage.
"So there is a reason for legal privilege - I don't know whether it's appropriate in this case or not. I just don't know enough about it."
Mr Varadkar also said that using powers under the Broadcasting Act to appoint a designated person to go into RTÉ to establish what had gone wrong had not been ruled out.
The Government has already ordered an external review and is finalising its terms of reference.
One option would be to use the act to appoint someone to go into RTÉ to secure all the relevant information and address the issues.
Mr Varadkar said initially the Government was not planning to take this approach, but he stressed that Minister for Media Catherine Martin was still reserving her judgement on that as a possible option.
"We haven't decided exactly which legal mechanism will be used," he said.
"So there is an option under the act for the minister to appoint a designated person and at least earlier in the week it wasn't planned to do that, but the minister is still reserving judgement on that and it remains an option but the important thing really is less the mechanism that we use, it's more the fact that it's done and that somebody from the outside who understands corporate governance, understands accounting and understands how organisations should be run, and should not be run, is brought in to carry out an assessment, to do a report for Government and to put things right."
Additional reporting PA
