The only additional payment due in Ryan Tubridy's 2015-2020 contract with RTÉ was an end-of-contract payment of €120,000, Prime Time has learned.
Accountants from Grant Thornton are investigating why earnings for Ryan Tubridy were understated by a total of the same amount across 2017 to 2019.
An end-of-contract payment had applied to the five-year deal the previous presenter of the Late Late Show, Pat Kenny, agreed with RTÉ in 2008. The difference was that Pat Kenny’s payment was publicly disclosed by RTÉ, with a note on its inclusion in his 2013 earnings of €728,417 attached to its Top 10 Talent public statements. In the event, Mr Kenny left RTÉ anyway.
A similar arrangement in Ryan Tubridy’s contract was regarded as a loyalty bonus, designed to retain Mr Tubridy over the five years from 2015 to 2020. But RTÉ told Oireachtas committee meetings this week that the €120,000 loyalty bonus was not paid.
"Ryan Tubridy was due a loyalty bonus at the end of his contract of €120,000. That was never paid and never accrued for in the accounts," RTÉ Chief Financial Officer, Richard Collins, told the Oireachtas Media Committee on Wednesday.
"However, for an unexplained reason, that €120,000 was credited against his earnings between 2017 and 2019. That is under investigation at the moment by Grant Thornton."
"Why this figure was understated - and by whom - that is the question we as a Board are also very anxious to know the answer to," RTÉ Chair, Siún Ní Raghallaigh told the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee on Thursday.
"For the record, I want to confirm that he did not receive an exit fee," she told the Media Committee the day prior.
The Grant Thornton investigation into the €120,000 in undisclosed payments made to Mr Tubridy between 2017 and 2019 is likely to take four weeks, according to RTÉ.
It covers what the broadcaster has attributed as earnings for Mr Tubridy of €20,000 in 2017, €50,000 in 2018, and €50,000 in 2019, a total of €120,000 which went undisclosed in its public statements on what Mr Tubridy earned.
In her resignation from the role of Director-General last week, Dee Forbes referred to RTÉ’s statement about the 2017-2019 extra payments.
"I have no knowledge of those payments and the Board has not raised those questions with me," she said.
Addressing her involvement in the wider controversy, she said that "in early 2020 RTÉ began discussions around the renewal of Ryan Tubridy's contract".
"That contract contained contractual payments that had been negotiated and put in place prior to my arrival at RTÉ."
That statement gave rise to questions about the status of the total of €120,000 payments between 2017 and 2019, given that the 2015-2020 contract that was in place when Ms Forbes began her tenure as Director-General in July 2016, contained no extra payments beyond the 2020 end-of-contract bonus and no side sponsorship deals.
On Wednesday, current RTÉ Chief Financial Officer Richard Collins was questioned by Sinn Féin TD Imelda Munster about the payments made prior to 2020.
"Who signed off on it?" asked Deputy Munster.
"I did not sign off on it," replied Mr Collins.
He said it was the then Director-General, Ms Forbes, and the CFO at the time, Breda O’Keeffe.
"They were published on 20 January, three days after I joined RTÉ. I had not taken up the CFO role at that stage," he said.
The RTÉ Board is responsible for oversight and governance of the organisation. It was chaired by businesswoman and Riverdance co-founder, Moya Doherty, between 2014 and 2022.
A Remuneration and Management Development Committee has been one of the Board’s permanent subcommittees for many years. Ms Doherty chaired it.
Under RTÉ’s terms of reference for the committee, its duties included "consulting with the Director-General in relation to 'top talent’ contractor contracts."
Ms Doherty told the Public Accounts Committee on Thursday that no meeting of the committee took place in 2020, due to the pandemic, and because she had a period of personal illness.
However, she said she kept in touch with the Director-General at all times on the negotiations for the renewal of Ryan Tubridy’s contract.
In the five years between 2017 and 2021 the Remuneration Committee held six meetings, with just one in 2019, none in 2020, and one in 2021.
By comparison, in the five years from 2012 to 2016, it held 14.
RTÉ’s disclosed on Thursday that it has also commissioned Grant Thornton to review the reported remuneration for the top 10 most highly paid on-air presenters for the years 2008-2022.
