One year on from the day that shook RTÉ to its core

It is said that news is just the first rough draft of history.

As journalists, we are often the ones to report on this initial snapshot of defining events.

Sometimes, but not always, it is possible to foresee how big the fallout will be from a story as it begins to unfold.

On this day one year ago, those of us in RTÉ who were involved in reporting the news that the station had paid top broadcaster Ryan Tubridy hundreds of thousands more than it had publicly declared, knew the story was seismic for the organisation.

However, few of us could have predicted the extraordinary fallout from the earthquake that followed over the subsequent days, weeks and months.

What came next were events and disclosures that rocked the very foundations of the country’s biggest media organisation.

It was initially a complicated story involving accounting, commercial deals, barter accounts, agents, and a lot more besides.

The revelations quickly led, however, to more and more questions about what had happened, why and who had signed off on it.

The debacle soon opened the flood gates to a plethora of other claims about practices across the organisation, from HR issues, corporate governance and internal communication, to staff severance deals, nixers, gifts and more.

And of course, the now infamous Toy Show The Musical.

Put simply though, at the centre of it all was one issue, trust in an organisation, whose essence fundamentally depends on it, was shattered.

Questions were rightly raised by the public, politicians and staff about how RTÉ was being run and whether public money collected through the licence fee was being appropriately spent and accounted for.

The meltdown also thrust front and centre the issue of the under-funding of the station, which had been danced around by politicians for decades without any definitive long-term sustainable solution being put in place, despite the recommendations of the Future of Media Commission.

Over the space of just a couple of weeks, RTÉ as an entity was rocked to its core, with its very future questioned by some.

This wasn’t just a philosophical question, because many of its previously loyal listeners and viewers stopped renewing their licence fees in disgust and protest, throwing the financial viability of the organisation into genuine doubt and prompting a bailout from the Government.

Many, but not all, of the key figures at the centre of the affair appeared before various Oireachtas committees where they were grilled in forensic detail about who knew what and when, what they did and didn’t sign off on, and why nobody shouted stop.

Throughout and to date though, the voice of the former Director General Dee Forbes has remained more or less silent, save for a statement at the start of the revelations.

A central decision-maker in so many of the issues that have emerged, she has stayed tight-lipped, declining invitations from Oireachtas committees and from media to explain her version of events, citing medical reasons.

The current Director General Kevin Bakhurst, who took up his position a little over a fortnight after the trouble all kicked off, faced a monumental task though and not one that he would or could have anticipated when he originally accepted the role.

Over the course of many weeks, both before and after Mr Bakhurst took up his job, there were multiple departures from the broadcaster’s executive board.

Those departures in turn led to intense scrutiny and public disgust about exit packages paid to some of those concerned and calls for transparency about the amounts involved.

Ryan Tubridy was also among those to depart the organisation after the Director General controversially decided to end negotiations about his return to the airwaves in August.

The list of reports commissioned by the Government and by RTÉ itself into different facets of the debacle grew longer and longer.

Stories flowed and through the otherwise quiet summer days of what is known in the news business as “silly season”, they dominated the front pages, led the bulletins and filled the websites of other Irish media, who became obsessed and fascinated with the revelations.

Morale among staff, which wasn’t great even before events kicked off in June, bottomed out, not helped by recruitment being frozen and discretionary spending being parked.

Those who worked in RTÉ, in many cases for a small fraction of the wages of the so-called “top talent” and senior executives, were appalled and dismayed by what they were learning, but perhaps not always surprised.

The Pandora’s box that had been opened shattered their confidence in their own employer and the steady stream of revelations and unanswered questions that followed over many months only served to undermine it further.

For those of us working in news and current affairs content production, who had to report on it all, it was a particularly challenging time.

Eventually, as the year wore on and the number of fresh revelations began to diminish, the febrile atmosphere around the controversy started to wane slightly.

The public, understandably weary of the constant drip feed of developments, seemed to grow bored of the excruciating detail and appeared to adopt a “just sort it out” attitude to the crisis.

January brought the first of what was to become a rolling series of publications of the plethora of reports that had been commissioned.

The Grant Thornton examination of Toy Show the Musical confirmed a stunning lapse of oversight on the production, with no written record of the RTÉ Board ever granting its approval for the project which lost €2.2m.

Days later, in a separate review of RTÉ’s voluntary exit programmes in 2017 and 2021, law firm McCann FitzGerald found former chief financial officer Breda O’Keeffe’s departure with a substantial payment had been the only one not considered and approved by the executive board as required under the scheme rules.

While in ten other cases, applications for exit under the 2017 voluntary exit programme were approved and termination payments paid, despite the departures not satisfying the requirements of a redundancy within the meaning of the law.

But just as the narrative around the crisis at RTÉ seemed to ebb towards the future rather than the past, the station was once again rocked by the sudden and unexpected resignation of the respected chair of the board, Siún Ní Raghallaigh, after just over a year in the role.

This followed an extraordinary interview on the station’s Prime Time programme with Minister for Media Catherine Martin in which she failed to express confidence in Ms Ní Raghallaigh because of alleged communication failures.

The claims were staunchly rebutted by Ms Ní Raghallaigh, with a he-said-she-said analysis of events playing out over a number of days.

Ultimately though, the board now found itself without a leader at a pivotal time of self-reflection and reform at RTÉ and as negotiations on future funding were about to reach a crunch point.

The vacuum was quickly filled by the appointment of a replacement, former KPMG managing partner Terence O’Rourke and a number of other board appointments were also made to strengthen it for the challenges that lie ahead.

The sheer scale of those was soon laid bare, with the publication last month of three Government commissioned expert reports on RTÉ, one looking at governance and culture, another examining contractor fees, HR and other matters and a forensic accountant’s analysis of RTÉ’s use of a “barter account”.

None of the three made for pretty reading, with the documents laying out in stark detail a litany of failures and deficiencies that had become structurally interwoven into the fabric of the broadcaster over many years.

But what was different this time is that the reports contained recommendations, 116 in total, that pointed the way towards a better future.

RTÉ immediately accepted in principle the suggestions and explained that in many cases they had already been implemented or at very least work on them was already under way.

Much has clearly changed in the 12 fleeting months since the crisis first engulfed the Montrose campus and its satellite offices around the country and abroad.

Pay of top earners has been capped at €250,000, so nobody going forward will earn more than the Director General.

The board has been reskilled and there have been extensive procedural changes to what it does and how it does it, including in the area of approval of remuneration of the highest paid and in its important subcommittees.

Communications and reporting between the board and senior management have been boosted.

There has been considerable renewal of the senior leadership, with new appointments, responsibilities and procedures.

There is much ongoing work on improving staff engagement and increasing communication and transparency within and outside the organisation.

Key to this is the establishment of registers of interests, gifts and external activities for staff.

RTÉ’s financial management controls have also been reformed, with a greater focus on risk and also on how spending is approved and account for.

And work is complete on a new strategy and vision for RTÉ, which is expected to be published on Tuesday.

It builds on the Strategic Vision document published in November which set out a broad plan that will see the public service broadcaster become smaller over the next five years, with 20% fewer staff, but while maintaining a strong regional presence.

More content will be produced by the independent sector and there will be significant new investment in digital platforms.

But of course investment requires funding, and the focus is now firmly fixed on the Government to see whether it lives up to it often repeated pledge to make a decision on how RTÉ will be financed into the long-term before the Dáil’s rises for the summer recess in a few weeks.

Discussions continue among the coalition partners about what the model will be.

Some favour a system where Revenue would collect a form of reformed licence fee or charge.

Others think direct exchequer funding would be preferable.

In recent weeks it has emerged that one compromise could be a hybrid model, with Revenue collecting a reduced TV licence which would then be topped up by the exchequer, though it is understood that nobody has officially tabled this as a formal proposal.

Catherine Martin has cautioned that this hybrid idea could represent the worst of both worlds.

She has repeatedly said that whatever the model, it needs to be sustainable, acceptable to the public and protective of the independence of media.

However, with the leadership of the Green Party now up for decision and her future in the Cabinet therefore not guaranteed, it is possible that the minister’s opinion on the situation may become moot.

Although she has publicly stated that it is her wish to see the reform of RTÉ through to finality.

So one year on from the lighting of the match that ignited an inferno at the national broadcaster, the fire is now out and the rebuilding is well under way.

Audience trust in RTÉ is also starting to return, as outlined in the recent Reuters Digital News Report.

“I believe we have faced key issues and committed to necessary reform to deliver the transformation RTÉ needs,” Kevin Bakhurst said.

“When I look back at the year, one of my biggest sources of frustration is that the hard work and dedication of our staff and partners in the creative sector and their many achievements on air, on screen and online, and elsewhere, were overshadowed by the revelations. I am hopeful that this is starting to change,” he said.

But much still remains to be done and the nature of RTÉ’s future remains far from clear and certain.

The only thing that is assured, is that events of 22 June 2023 have changed the organisation forever.