‘Critical’ agreement to underwrite payments to Tubridy was verbal – RTE deputy

A “critical” agreement to underwrite commercial payments to RTE presenter Ryan Tubridy was made verbally between former director general Dee Forbes and Tubridy’s agent, a committee has been told.

RTE interim director general Adrian Lynch told the Oireachtas media committee several times that based on communications and documentation he had read, there was no written agreement that RTE should guarantee money to its highest paid presenter if a sponsorship deal fell through.

He said the verbal guarantee to underwrite the deal – given on May 7 2020 during a video call meeting with then director general Dee Forbes, Tubridy’s agent and an RTE solicitor – was “critical” and the “significant thing at the centre of this”.

“I’ve reviewed some of the correspondence around this, the agent was particularly focused on getting a guarantee which there was no record outside of the verbal agreement that this was provided and the legal position was it shouldn’t be provided,” Mr Lynch said.

“I went to look for the contract, the written agreement basically underwriting this, and I didn’t find one.

“Then I discovered in fact that a verbal agreement had been given on this (Microsoft) Teams call on May 7.

“I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t find it in the correspondence. I was looking for it and I was going, ‘Where is the agreement in relation to the 75,000 euro’, and then I found out, actually, this was given verbally.

“There is just a record of the Teams call.

“I went through all the files to see if there was a side letter in relation to that.

“It was a verbal agreement given by the director general to (Tubridy’s agent) Noel Kelly.”

Mr Lynch added that when the sponsor pulled out, “RTE should have declared Ryan Tubridy’s earnings”.

He said he was not aware of the full aspects of the commercial deal.

“I had absolutely no awareness of how this deal was operationalised, in terms of where it was paid from or the relationship with the client, no.

“What happened here was, it comes back to the underwriting of this arrangement, because RTE should never underwrite a commercial agreement and, in relation to a talent, to say that they will pay out of public funds to that talent.

“So that is what then led to incorrect figures being published, completely lacking in transparency and a complete breach of corporate governance.”

Under the deal, Tubridy was to be paid 75,000 euro annually from a sponsor over a five-year period, but due to the verbal agreement, if the sponsorship fell through, RTE would pay the 75,000 instead.

The Grant Thornton report said two invoices were raised in 2022 by Tubridy’s agent for 75,000 euro each, under the description of “consultancy fees”, dated May 9 and July 6 2022.

The committee heard that Tubridy’s name did not appear on the invoices which were made out to Mr Kelly’s company.

RTE commercial director Geraldine O’Leary said she only knew about the commercial element of the deal and added that it was only later when she learned it was underwritten by RTE.

She said she first saw the invoices in March this year, but they had been raised previously within her office.

“It became obvious to me that there was obviously some commitment to pay the money when I was asked to raise the invoices, but I only found out subsequently that it was underwritten,” she said.

“They were raised in my office but I didn’t see the invoices. I didn’t see the actual terminology of the invoices.

“The conversation about whether ‘consultancy fees’, which I’ve said consistently, it may well have been a conversation (between) me and the director general, but I don’t want to say it was because I cannot remember the precise conversation.”