Former RTÉ Director-General Dee Forbes reversed a decision she made with two other top RTÉ executives not to underwrite payments of €75,000 a year in a commercial sponsorship deal with Ryan Tubridy, Prime Time understands.
Just one week before Ms Forbes provided Mr Tubridy's agent with a guarantee that RTÉ would underwrite the payments, she and two other executives met to discuss the contract and resolved not to do so.
It is not clear why Ms Forbes did an apparent U-turn, but it cost RTÉ €225,000 over three years in extra fees paid to Mr Tubridy and a further €69,477 for the staging, sets and catering for three promotional events tied to the side deal.
The payments, and their concealment from the public by RTÉ, have led to a grave reputational and management crisis at the national broadcaster.
Prime Time has established that on 30 April 2020, a meeting of RTÉ executives directly concerned with the contract negotiations, including Ms Forbes, agreed that RTÉ would not underwrite or guarantee the €75,000-a-year side deal involving Mr Tubridy and a commercial sponsor, Renault. A week later, Ms Forbes did the opposite. It is not clear why.
Contract negotiations with Mr Tubridy's agent Noel Kelly of NK Management had been ongoing since Autumn 2019 for a new 2020-2025 contract. In the week before Christmas, 2019, the then Director-General, Dee Forbes, and the then Chief Financial Officer, Breda O’Keeffe met with Noel Kelly.
Following on, Ms O’Keefe emailed the proposed terms of the new contract to Mr Kelly on Thursday, December 19 2019. The proposed offer was: RTÉ would pay Mr Tubridy €420,000 in fees per year, plus a commercial sponsorship with a third party for €75,000 per annum would be "facilitated by RTE".
Negotiations continued. Selected emails supplied by Noel Kelly and Ryan Tubridy to the Dáil's Committee of Public Accounts (PAC) on Tuesday show there was a "lengthy discussion" at another meeting involving Ms Forbes, Ms O’Keeffe and Mr Kelly on January 15 2020, after which an email from Mr Kelly on the following day noted how all involved were working hard to agree contracts and "to assist RTÉ through this difficult time."
A further meeting took place on Tuesday February 18 2020. In an email the next day, Noel Kelly made clear he had consulted Mr Tubridy. He wrote that following the discussion, "we had a meeting with our client, and we are coming back to you on our position."
On the €75,000 a year sponsorship side deal, he wrote: "...we would also need a side letter agreement from RTÉ to guarantee and underwrite this fee for the duration of this contract and beyond into the next contract."
The PAC saw a copy of the emailed response of February 20 2020 from the former RTÉ CFO, Breda O’Keeffe, to Mr Kelly, in which in relation to the side sponsorship deal, she stated: "...we can provide you with a side letter to underwrite this fee for the duration of the contract."
Her email was copied to Dee Forbes and Jim Jennings, the Director of Content for RTÉ.
At the Committee of Public Accounts on Tuesday, Mr Kelly invoked the February 20 2020 email to assert that RTÉ had already agreed to underwrite the side deal before May 7 2020, the date RTÉ says the deal was made legally binding in an online meeting.
He said RTÉ executives had blamed former Director-General Dee Forbes "for doing a solo run" and had claimed there was a strong "push-back" against the idea of underwriting the agreement, but that was "incorrect."
However, Prime Time has established that there is evidence that there was a determination made at a meeting held on Thursday, April 30 2020 at RTÉ that it would not underwrite the side deal.
The sole purpose of the April 30 2020 meeting was to discuss the contract negotiations with Mr Tubridy.
Present at it were the then Director-General, Dee Forbes; the Director of Content, Jim Jennings — whose department is responsible for the Late Late Show; the new Chief Financial Officer, Richard Collins — who had taken over as CFO on April 1 2020 and had been in RTÉ since mid-January 2020 — and an RTÉ lawyer.
The meeting resolved that RTÉ would not indemnify the side sponsorship deal that was being negotiated in parallel with Mr Tubridy's main contract.
It discussed how, under the side deal, Ryan Tubridy would be allowed make promotional appearances for Renault in return for payments of €75,000 a year from the carmaker and Late Late Show sponsor.
Prime Time understands that Ms Forbes told the April 30 2020 meeting that RTÉ could not guarantee to indemnify those payments, and that she hoped to conclude the contract with Noel Kelly the following week.
However, one week later, on Thursday, May 7 2020, Dee Forbes agreed the opposite. At an online meeting with Noel Kelly and another representative of his company, in the presence of an RTÉ lawyer, Ms Forbes verbally agreed to underwrite the side deal, for what Noel Kelly’s company, NK Management, later said was "in consideration of the new agreement".
Neither of the two other members of the executive board present at the April 30 meeting, the Director of Content, Jim Jennings, nor the Chief Financial Officer, Mr Collins, were present at the May 7 2020 meeting.
Last week, at the Oireachtas Media Committee, Mr Collins said that he was not even aware until last month that it had happened.
He said the April 30 meeting was "the last I knew of it" and "it was news to me when I read the statement from the acting director-general last week that a guarantee had been given seven days later".
Mr Collins again referred to the April 30 meeting at Thursday's PAC hearing. He said that during the handover period between the former CFO, Ms Breda O’Keeffe and himself, neither she nor the former DG, Ms Forbes, had briefed him in terms of guarantees or indemnities being given by RTÉ on the side sponsorship deal. He said Ms Forbes had confirmed at the April 30 2020 meeting that no guarantee would be given.
Neither Mr Collins nor Mr Jennings responded to a request for comment from Prime Time.
RTÉ declined to release to Prime Time records it holds of each of the April 30 2020 and May 7 2020 online meetings on the basis that they are notes prepared by a solicitor and "subject to legal professional privilege."
RTÉ has told the Oireachtas committees that it has sought external legal advice in relation to the legal privilege, but it is understood that RTÉ is also concerned not to set a precedent that may be argued to apply in other circumstances.
The April 30 meeting was crucial to the RTÉ decision-making on the contract negotiations, with all the lead executives relevant to the contract present.
As a result of the DG’s verbal commitment to underwrite the commercial agreement at the online meeting a week later, and its legally binding nature, RTÉ ended up not only issuing a credit note for €75,000 to Renault for the first year, but also then paying €75,000 to a Noel Kelly company for Ryan Tubridy for each of two further years through a barter account run by its Commercial division, as well as incurring a cost of almost €70,000 more for staging, sets, and catering for the three events held.
Ms Forbes did not respond to a request for comment. However, in a statement on June 26 last, she said that she led the negotiations on Ryan Tubridy’s contract and that a sponsorship deal was explored "to find a solution to the budgetary challenges" RTÉ faced in its contract with Mr Tubridy. She also said that she did not " at any stage act contrary to any advice".
The side commercial deal involved appearances by Ryan Tubridy at Renault 'roadshow’ events in return for €75,000 a year. On Tuesday, at the PAC, Mr Tubridy and his agent disputed assertions by TDs and senators that this amounted to RTÉ finding another way of ensuring he was paid over half a million a year in total annually between 2020 and 2022.
In the event, Renault Ireland did pay Mr Tubridy €75,000 for the first year of the side deal, but because the terms of the deal required it to be 'cost neutral’ to Renault, RTÉ gave Renault a rebate for that same amount via a credit note, so that it did not cost Renault anything.
But RTÉ also paid for the three events eventually held post-pandemic, at a cost of €52,586 — €30,586 for staging them and €22,000 for sets.
Then, because of the agreement to underwrite the deal, for the years 2021 and 2022, RTÉ paid Mr Tubridy a further €150,000, even though no further events were held. On Tuesday, Mr Tubridy indicated to the PAC that he would return that money if required to or if the promotional appearances he was contracted for did not now take place.
Mr Kelly told the PAC on Tuesday that the records he and Mr Tubridy supplied to it "are key documents".
RTÉ management also supplied documents to Thursday's PAC meeting. One of the documents, an email from Mr Kelly to Ms Forbes of April 25 2022 was invoked by RTÉ Deputy Director General Adrian Lynch to claim the former DG, Ms Forbes had been in direct separate contact with Noel Kelly in relation to the arrangements for payment of the €75,000 fees.
Mr Kelly’s email of April 25 2022 to Ms Forbes states, "It was good to catch up with you today" and goes on to request that Ms Forbes ask RTÉ’s then commercial director, Geraldine O’Leary to send him on "the invoicing details".
Ms O’Leary told the Oireachtas Media Committee on the June 28 last that she had "a number of conversations with both the director general and Noel Kelly about the raising of these invoices" and that Ms Forbes had instructed her to use the barter account to do so.
From other relevant emails released by Mr Kelly and Mr Tubridy to the PAC on Tuesday last, July 11, it is shown that on Friday April 29 2022 an email was sent from an RTÉ email address to Ms O’Leary, its then Commercial Director. The subject line was "Details for Noel".
The instruction stated that the invoice be addressed to Astus, the barter company, in euro, at its London address and added: "Do not put any person’s name on the invoice. If he sends it back to me I will then sort everything else out".
Within a minute, Geraldine O’Leary forwarded that email directly on to Noel Kelly, writing: "As discussed".
One of Mr Kelly’s companies then issued two invoices for €75,000, one of May 9 2022 and another on July 6 2022 for "consultancy fees" to the barter company.
Separately, another side letter has added to the payment controversy. This was an agreed side letter from Ms Forbes issued in July 2020 guaranteeing that Mr Tubridy’s fee would not be reduced over the course of the contract.
It emerged last week that the April 30 2020 meeting also decided that, separately, in return for an agreed reduction in Mr Tubridy’s main contract fees, RTÉ would issue a side letter that would guarantee that his fees would not be further reduced over the course of the 2020-2025 contract.
However, that guarantee was to be caveated, because of what the Oireachtas Media Committee heard was huge economic uncertainty at the time, due to the Covid pandemic. As the then CFO, Richard Collins told last week’s Committee meeting: "Obviously Covid-19 was in progress at that stage. Nobody knew how bad it was going to get".
Last week, the fee guarantee letter, sent on July 21 2020, was published. However, the only caveat included related to fee cuts "that might be imposed by changes to legislation."
On Monday, the new director-general of RTÉ, Kevin Bakhurst, revealed that Jim Jennings and Richard Collins were no longer part of the top leadership team at RTÉ.
Mr Jennings and Mr Collins were the two executives present with Ms Forbes at the meeting of April 30 2020 that agreed not to underwrite the Renault sponsorship side deal.
Mr Bakhurst said that Jim Jennings had made clear to him that "going forward, he doesn't want to be part of the new leadership team or executive". He said Richard Collins would be "helping with Oireachtas inquiries and other work" but had "stood back from his day-to-day role as CFO" and he did not know if Mr Collins would return to a senior role.
Accountants Grant Thornton are currently looking into a separate controversy concerning the treatment of a €120,000 loyalty payment that was due to Ryan Tubridy at the end of his 2015-2020 contract, and which, by agreement, was not paid as part of the new negotiated contract for 2020-2025, but which was misstated in RTÉ's 2017-2019 publicly declared earnings for Mr Tubridy.
That second Grant Thornton review is still outstanding, as is a part of it relating to the 2008-2009 period.
However, in advance of Thursday’s PAC hearing, RTÉ sent an interim report from Grant Thornton’s second review relating to declared earnings for RTÉ’s top presenters from 2010-2022.
RTÉ Board Chair Siún Ní Raghallaigh’s opening statement to the PAC stated that with the exception of the figures already restated, the interim review "confirms that RTÉ had correctly stated and properly accounted for these figures for the period 2010 to 2022".
