Zinging into Leinster House in a midnight blue velour jacket and a spotted green tie, Ryan Tubridy was clear on his message. 

He is a man who loves a microphone, doesn’t have much of a head for finance or negotiation, respects the Oireachtas deeply and has been treated inhumanely over the past three weeks. Being publicly cancelled, he said, is not something he’d recommend. 

In the long minutes before the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee (PAC) began, Tubridy sat facing three rows of politicians who were studiously thumbing through the information pack he and his agent had sent through just that morning. 

In an almost silent room, Tubridy waited for the questioning to begin. He drummed his fingers, smoothed his hair back, looked inquisitively around the room, noting the cameras that would soon flick on for transmission to laptops, phones and pubs around the country. 

Perhaps the presenter could pick up on the fury building among politicians, who had received the documents on the way to Leinster House, giving them a minuscule amount of time to prepare, or perhaps not. 

“It has been a tortuous three weeks,” he would later apologise to a ticked off Fianna Fáil TD James O’Connor. “What’s gone missing in the last few weeks, forgive me, is there has been a humanity bypass…So, just bear with us.”

Beside Tubridy at all times was Noel Kelly, his agent and a man he continued to call his friend through the day. 

And behind them both was Joe O’Malley, managing partner and head of the commercial litigation and dispute resolution with Hayes solicitors. O’Malley, who was prohibited from speaking to his clients or disrupting the committee in any way, intermittently leant forward with notes for the duo, or a document to aid their answers. 

Asked early on whether a crisis communications team had been engaged, Tubridy explained that he had surrounded himself with a team – part of that team was PR man Ray Gordon – but he said that he had in no way been advised to delay the sending of documents until that morning. 

Well-briefed on the messaging, the two men were vehement in the three-hour PAC meeting that there had been no secret payments to Tubridy, everything Kelly did in the logistics of negotiating deals and sending invoices to unknown foreign  companies he did under instruction from RTÉ – and the past weeks of scandal are entirely the fault of the broadcaster. 

From Tubridy’s six hours in front of politicians, his level of fury at the “mauling” that he has been through oscillated from physical – at times he banged his hand on the table for emphasis – to emotional, holding long pauses as he considered his next words. 

He told politicians, many of whom stole a moment in their allotted time to profess their fondness for his show, that he now found it hard to leave his home in Monkstown.

Kelly continued to explain: “Ryan and I and our families and our friends have attracted a horrendous amount of abuse and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, why? Because the only person whose face in this whole thing that was recognisable was Ryan Tubridy’s.” 

But as the questioning dragged on into the second part of the day and over to the Oireachtas Media Committee, things began to muddle. The messaging, which had been linen crisp in the morning, was crumpling with repeated exposure. 

As the “fiasco”, as Tubridy called it, enters its fourth week, there is now a gaping fissure between the narrative that RTÉ has put forward through its executive team and board members, and the account that the Tubridy side has now presented, backed up by a binder of previously unseen documents. 

“No secrets” vs “Silos”

A dominant theme during RTÉ’s stint in front of the Oireachtas Committees was the impression that the senior executive team were operating in silos and the only person in full possession of all the facts regarding the tripartie agreement between Renault, RTÉ and Tubridy was Dee Forbes, the then director general.

That assertion seemed to crumble after the production of a document by Kelly and Tubridy, which shows a series of emails exchanged between January 16 and February 28, 2020 between Kelly, Forbes, then chief financial officer Breda O’Keefe, and director of content Jim Jennings.

The emails appear to show that the €75,000 deal for Renault events was to be underwritten by RTÉ and was known to those executives. In a response on behalf of RTÉ, O’Keeffe wrote on February 20: “We made good progress on what the commercial agreement would be and we agree to one in Dublin and two outside Dublin which are RTÉ-led LLS [Late Late Show] events and we can provide you with a side letter to underwrite this fee for the duration of the contract.”

Addressing the issue Tubridy said; “When talking about who knew  it was far from being secret, it was well-known.” 

Kelly reiterated this; “There was no way that Dee Forbes was the only one that knew, other people knew other than Forbes. There was no secret.” He later added: “Other people knew bar Dee Forbes, that’s the whole point… That’s why I find the whole thing so bizarre.”

O’Keefe, who appeared before the Oireachtas Media committee last week, was adamant that when she left RTÉ in the first months of 2020, there had been no agreement made to underwrite the Renault deal. 

In a statement issued at 9.47am this morning, RTÉ rejected the claim that the January email was a contractual commitment on the part of  RTÉ to underwrite the payments in question.

“RTÉ’s position is that the email of 20 February 2020 formed part of the discussions and engagement between it and NK Management in relation to the proposed new TV and radio contract with Mr Tubridy/Tuttle Productions and did not comprise a binding legal or contractual commitment on its part.”

RTÉ’s position is the first and only commitment to underwrite the deal was given by the former Director General during a Microsoft Teams call on May 7, 2020.

Kelly has also been adamant that it was RTÉ who came up with the idea for the Renault deal, not him and that he didn’t know that RTÉ issued a €75,000 credit note to the car company as part of the deal. 

Tubridy’s “heart and soul” 

Interim Director General Adrian Lynch last week said it was “possible” that Tubridy knew in advance of his decision to depart from the Late Late Show about the issues that had been flagged by Deloitte’s audit in March. 

This was repeatedly and vociferously denied by Tubridy, who looked close to tears of frustration as he said that his decision to leave the marquee show was made last August from the “heart and soul” after leaving so much on the studio floor during the pandemic period. 

It was a theme that was visited upon again and again, and both Tubridy and Kelly held their line – but when asked whether there was any correspondence either could produce to indicate that they had been discussing it prior to March 2023, the question was sidestepped and was never returned to again. 

“Consultancy fees”

The details of the invoices sent by Kelly for two payments totalling €150,000 to be paid to CMS Marketing, a sister company of NK Management by Astus, the UK company managing RTÉ’s barter account, have been a major sticking point. 

In her testimony, Geraldine O’Leary, RTÉ’s former commercial director who took early retirement on Monday, said that Forbes had been the one to direct her to raise the invoices but that she couldn’t remember who came up with the term “consultancy fees” as a descriptor. 

Her recollection was that it was either herself, Forbes or Kelly but as she was being “100 per cent honest” she couldn’t say who it was. 

Kelly had no issue picking his own brain for a recollection and said without hesitation that it was O’Leary who had suggested that “consultancy fees” be put on the invoice. 

The agent’s willingness to blindly send an invoice to a UK company he didn’t recognise as he was told to do so by RTÉ was continually questioned, and Social Democrat TD Catherine Murphy tried to put an end to his repeated statement that he did so “under instruction” by invoking the “Nuremberg defence”.

Tubridy’s top-ups or Tubridy’s pay cut?

Throughout the hearing Kelly maintained that the Tripartite agreement with Renault, worth €75,000 per annum, had been entirely separate from Tubridy’s annual broadcasting fee of €440,000 and that the presenter had taken a 20 per cent pay cut in 2020. 

Several TDs including the Green Party’s Marc Ó Cathasaigh and Imelda Munster of Sinn Féin challenged this, pointing out that the commercial deal was negotiated by the broadcaster and it formed part of the contract negotiations for Tubridy. 

Tubridy didn’t agree with the characterisation, but said that he could understand the room for perception issues on the matter. 

“Six roadshows left”

From RTÉ’s telling, it was made clear that Renault no longer wished to continue with the commercial deal after the first year, and this was the reason that the payments to fulfil the agreement underwritten by RTÉ were made through a barter account. 

But in Kelly’s telling, Renault has never formally indicated the end of the tripartite deal and as Tubridy has received €75,000 for each of the three originally contracted years, Renault is still “owed” six public appearances by him. 

It wasn’t until after lunch and in front of the media committee that Tubridy said he would return the €150,000 if the outstanding events didn’t take place.

As Tubridy is no longer the presenter of the Late Late Show, it’s difficult to see how these events could take place and in what capacity. 

As the clock ticked on 2pm, and Kelly was still answering questions from PAC chair, Brian Stanley, Tubridy was clearly ready to be finished.

He packed his papers into a folder, indicating that he was done, and it was on to the next meeting. 

Ian Kehoe, the editor of The Currency, is on the board of RTÉ. He is a member of the Audit & Risk Committee of the board that commissioned the Grant Thornton report. He was not involved in the editing of this article nor did he see it prior to publication.