Below is Justine McCarthy’s opinion piece in The Irish Times yesterday. She’s somewhat tough on Dee Forbes but it makes great sense. Surely managers have to be held to account for their stewardship, especially in the public sector.
If Ms Forbes is unable to attend or give account for herself why not have someone represent her at hearings.
RTÉ’s corridors were throbbing with joy last Friday afternoon. Children skipped and squealed with excitement in the countdown to curtain-up for the Toy Show. Workers in the television building watched on and wondered if they were witnessing the final act.
Plans to outsource the Late Late Show are in train. The move could be a fait accompli by Christmas next year. Fair City is for dispatch to the private commercial sector too, along with Lotto draws and religious services.
The TV documentary unit behind exposés such as Leathered: Violence in Irish Schools and Trackers: The People v The Banks is being shut down. Claire Byrne, one of the country’s best current affairs broadcasters, has decamped to Newstalk where, unlike at RTÉ, presenters’ pay is not capped.
Up to 400 other employees are being urged to go with voluntary redundancy packages. Among them are make-up artists, wardrobe-keepers, sound engineers, riggers and technicians who have kept the studio lights on during the bleakest times. Tumbleweed on a John Wayne scale is coming for Montrose.
The Oireachtas media committee’s meeting with RTÉ on Wednesday was more Shakespeare than cowboys-and-injuns. Dee Forbes was not on the list to appear.
Like Banquo’s ghost, RTÉ’s director general and board member quit after news of undisclosed payments to Ryan Tubridy detonated a scandal involving barter accounts, false figures and fancy flip-flops. She has hardly been seen in public in the 2½ years since then but her legacy continues to influence Montrose and its television schedule, which is littered with programme repeats. The State’s purse is €725 million the poorer from the broadcaster’s annualised bailout by the Government.
While RTÉ workers and viewers are forced to pay the price for poor administration, Forbes has eluded accountability. By resigning – albeit reluctantly – following the revelation of Tubridy’s €120,000 “consultancy” fees, she was automatically exempted from the Broadcasting Act’s requirement that the DG must answer to the Oireachtas committee. Since then, she has consistently refused the committee’s invitations to appear before it, citing medical grounds.
When asked to appear remotely or to submit a written statement her lawyers replied that she was unfit to do either. Eight independent reports have examined RTÉ’s finances, governance and culture. It is unknown how many – if any – she co-operated with because most are anonymised, although McCann Fitzgerald’s report on voluntary exit schemes does note that Forbes was unavailable for interview “for medical reasons”.While we can only accept that she is afflicted by a medical condition, the public are still being denied access to information that the person who ran the place has about the crisis that befell it on her watch.
“We believe there should be accountability, and to a certain extent there has been, for the events covered in our review,” states the examination team chaired by Niamh Brennan. However, it adds, “several RTÉ executives” did not attend the nine Oireachtas committee hearings that had been conducted by the time the report was written “and therefore could not be held to account”.
Forbes was the first external DG appointee in half a century when she left Discovery Networks to take up the job in 2016. Perhaps her government taskmasters hoped an outsider would be more ruthless in implementing cost-cutting measures in an admittedly bloated organisation. Instead, some parts of it got even cushier. Money poured like molten gold into the production of Toy Show: The Musical at the Convention Centre in Dublin. The extravaganza bombed, culminating in losses of €2.2 million. Forbes has never explained why the doomed show was not brought to the RTÉ board for final approval.
The Brennan Report states there are “several examples of the former director general not providing RTÉ’s board and others with information”. Another glaring omission was the €450,000 exit package for chief financial officer Breda O’Keeffe in 2020. A report by McCann Fitzgerald states that Moya Doherty, the then-chair, was not informed in advance of O’Keeffe’s departure despite it having been agreed three years earlier and, reportedly, with Forbes’s imprimatur.
Section three of the Broadcasting Act requires the DG to prepare the organisation’s annual accounts. One of three reports on RTÉ by Mazars said expenditure through barter media agencies went unreported in financial statements until 2019 and that credit balances with such agencies were not recorded on the balance sheet until 2022.
Even if she bears no legal obligation to explain these decisions, Forbes has an ethical obligation to RTÉ’S workforce and its audience to fill in the gaps in public knowledge. Why, for instance, did the organisation not have a chief compliance officer from 2018 until this year?
The answers to these questions matter. They matter to workers loyal to RTÉ who fear it is being stripped of essential assets. They matter to RTÉ viewers who should not be subjected to the same episodes of Cheap Irish Homes, Scannal and Room to Improve on a loop. They matter to democracy, when the absence of a dedicated security correspondent arguably undermines RTÉ’s public service while hostile drones and ships are skulking in Irish territory. And they matter to Kevin Bakhurst, Forbes’s successor handed the poisoned chalice of cutbacks, who must while away more time in front of the Oireachtas committee than in front of the telly.
He did a good PR job at Wednesday’s committee hearing when, like a Wise Man at Christmas, he brought great tidings that the broadcaster has emerged from financial deficit. But at what cost? RTÉ is an important crucible of information, culture and heritage. Its welcome decision to boycott the Eurovision Song Contest because of Israel’s involvement is testament to its seminal role in Irish life.
RTÉ has not been helped by incomplete information in the process of addressing its travails. For an organisation duty-bound to reveal national truths, this deficit is as significant as any monetary one.
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