Barter account revelations 'outrageous'

Labour senator and party spokeswoman on media Marie Sherlock (pictured) has said it is "constructive" that Ryan Tubridy and Noel Kelly have said they will appear at the media committee next week.

But she said "the bombshell" last night about there being more than one barter account in operation in RTÉ "is absolutely outrageous".

Speaking on RTÉ's Today with Claire Byrne, she said: "All the interactions last week talked about the barter account and really there is a sense of complete disarray within RTÉ now about its finances and about how it operates."

She pointed in particular to the letter from former Director General Dee Forbes to Ryan Tubridy in July 2020 "in the middle of the pandemic" where "there's a guarantee over a five-year term, because that was the duration of the contract, of no reductions to be sought from Ryan Tubridy".

"Yet just eight months later, RTÉ was out to its staff saying we need to get pay cuts from you to put the the organisation into better financial shape and again then, 12 months later it was having to try and make good some of the employment practices - the bogus self-employment practices that it has had in the organisation for many years," Ms Sherlock said.