LAST UPDATE | 14 Feb
RTÉ’S FORMER FINANCIAL controller Breda O’Keeffe got €450,000 in her exit package from the broadcaster in 2020.
This information was revealed to the Oireachtas Media Committee today by the broadcaster’s Director General Kevin Bakhurst.
The committee was hearing evidence from executives about the former CFO’s exit-payment and other lapses in financial governance, particularly in regards to the Toy Show musical production.
A previous report into ‘Golden Handshakes‘ at RTÉ found that hat the approval process for Breda O’Keeffe in the 2017 voluntary exit package (VEP) was “not complied with” by RTÉ.
The report found that RTÉ’s exit package for its former chief financial officer was “not considered and approved” by the broadcaster’s executive board, despite it being a requirement under the rules of its voluntary redundancy scheme.
Today it was discovered that O’Keeffe got paid nearly half a million euro when drawing down the exit package.
The Golden Handshakes report also found that the ex-CFO’s application was not sent to the RTÉ executive board for approval and she was the only person whose application was not considered by the group.
Last summer, O’Keeffe told the Public Accounts Committee that she had availed of the scheme when she had left in 2020. O’Keeffe said she had left the role voluntarily.
This was despite the scheme being typically only granted in circumstances where a role is suppressed or there has been a reorganisation within the company to reflect a role being made redundant.
The Golden Handshakes report reviewed 10 other exit payments and that totalled €223,010. O’Keeffe was paid over two times more the total of all ten other cases.
Sinn Féin TD Thomas Gould said he understands RTÉ’s former director of strategy Rory Coveney also received an exit package and asked the executives to tell him the value of the fee.
No figure was provided to Coveney’s alleged exit package. Coveney resigned in July 2023 at the beginning of the payment scandal last summer.
Chair of the committee and Fianna Fáil TD Niamh Smyth towards the end of the hearing appealed to former RTÉ-boss Dee Forbes to make herself available to the committee for questioning.
Forbes was the Director General between April 2016 and last June. She stepped down after it was revealed RTÉ had misreported broadcaster Ryan Tubridy’s salary, since 2017, by over €345,000.
Various Oireachtas committees have called on Forbes and other former RTÉ executives to come before them, to no avail. Forbes on all occasions has provided a sick-note to excuse her from appearing before TDs.
Smyth extended the invitation to appear before the committee to Coveney and former chair of the board Moya Doherty – who yesterday was identified as the person who confirmed that no formal approval was given to the Toy Show musical.
Smyth said: “Their input into our deliberations is really critical. And I would appeal to them to please not put the committee in the position of compelling them and ask them to make themselves available when they’re fit and ready and able to do that.”
Earlier, the fact that O’Keeffe and eight other key individuals relating to RTÉ were unable to attend today’s committee hearing was labelled as “simply not good enough” by TD Brendan Griffin.
Coveney, Doherty, and Forbes were also among those invited to attend today’s hearing and who did not show up.
Noting the no-shows, Brendan Griffin TD said the committee is “anxious to hear from those people at some stage in the future, as soon as possible”.
“We want to know, on behalf of the people, what really went on and these people are crucial to our enquiries,” Griffin told the committee.
“It’s not good enough that so many people were unable to attend. We all accept their health reasons, in some cases, but that everyone couldn’t attend or chose not to attend is simply not good enough.”
Former RTÉ commercial director Geraldine O’Leary, director of content Jim Jennings, former chief financial officer Richards Collins, board member Connor Murphy and board member Ian Kehoe were also invited.
However, none of the above are in attendance today.
Speaking at the outset of the committee this afternoon, Chair of the board Siún Ní Raghallaigh said there has been “serious deficiencies in governance” at RTÉ and took the opportunity to apologise to the committee.
She assured the committee that there would not be any repeat of any failings, such as the cost threshold blocking RTÉ projects from going ahead without board approval has been halved.
It came after a report into Toy Show The Musical – which recorded a €2.2 million loss after a single season in 2022 – found that no formal approval was given or provided by the board of RTÉ.
This was despite that approval being a requirement for projects with expenditure of above €2 million. It also found the board was not appropriately informed of the project throughout its development and the commercial risks were vastly underestimated.
Ní Raghallaigh has told today’s committee hearing that the report confirms a “significant lapse in oversight” of the musical.
She said: “It is also clear to me that the Executive should have been interrogated by the Board on the project, on an ongoing basis and in a much more rigorous fashion.”
She added that in this regard, “the Board acknowledge that they should have asked more questions”, and said it is a “source of regret” for each member that they didn’t.
“We take collective responsibility for the Board’s responsibility in this debacle,” she added.
Ní Raghallaigh told the committee that governance structures at RTÉ have been reformed and structured since the controversy.
Risk assessments are to be centralised in all decisions of the leadership team and a new formal approval process has been established for major expenditure projects. All submissions on expenditure approvals must include a business case and risk assessment.
The lower board authorisation limit will apply to sports rights, programme acquisitions, programme commissions and operating expenditure.
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