Ryan Tubridy and Noel Kelly said they were not aware Renault had withdrawn from the tripartite agreement.

In response to questions from Fianna Fáil TD Paul McAuliffe, Mr Kelly said "No, no idea".

Mr McAuliffe asked Mr Kelly about the invoices raised for three €75,000 payments due to RTÉ, and how the first payment made by Renault had been treated differently to the following two.

"The invoices were raised with you, you have a fiduciary responsibility as director of your company. You raised two - for the same three payments - you raised them under different companies, and you raise them for different reasons, and invoiced them to different people."

Mr Kelly replied: "We were under instruction, as you can see, 'description from RTÉ', 'description from RTÉ'..."

He added: "Yeah, and they were sent under instruction to RTÉ, and we presumed that Renault were going to be paying this."