Minister for Media Catherine Martin has said today’s report into RTÉ’s voluntary exit programmes demonstrates an “appalling disregard for the principles of equity, fairness and transparency in the treatment of staff”.
The report by a legal firm appointed by the broadcaster to conduct a review of voluntary exit packages found that ten departures did not satisfy the requirements of a redundancy within the meaning of the Redundancy Payments Acts.
In these cases, under the 2017 Voluntary Exit Programme, McCann Fitzgerald said the Revenue Commissioners may take the view that RTÉ should not have applied a tax exemption to these payments.
“I note the findings of the RTÉ commissioned report into its 2017 and 2021 voluntary exit programmes, which was carried out by McCann FitzGerald,” Ms Martin said in a statement
“The report demonstrates an appalling disregard for the principles of equity, fairness and transparency in the treatment of staff, which prevailed at the time.”
She added: “Earlier today, I met the Director General, Kevin Bakhurst, and he assured me that the control and oversight reforms, introduced over the past number of months, will ensure that this will not happen again.
McCann Fitzgerald’s report found that an exit package for former chief financial officer Breda O’Keeffe was not brought before the broadcaster’s executive board, but had been agreed with former director general Dee Forbes.
A spokesperson for Ms Forbes said that she “isn’t in a position to comment” on the findings of the review.
RTÉ Director General Kevin Bakhurst said he was “shocked” when he found out the exit package did not go through the executive board.
“We have put in place measures that mean can never happen again now.
“Anything like this would have to go through the leadership team and the board’s committee, so this could never take place again and it should never have happened.”
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Earlier, Mr Bakhurst told a meeting of employees that the package was agreed between Ms O’Keeffe and Ms Forbes.
He repeated that he thought it was “pretty shocking” that this is what happened given the financial constraints on the organisation.
According to sources at the staff meeting, Mr Bakhurst said the report accepted that the failure of Ms O’Keeffe’s exit package to go before the executive was a mistake by RTÉ, not Ms O’Keeffe.
He said there were no other individuals identified whose voluntary exit packages did not go through the correct processes.
However, he said there is a question about a small number of individuals’ exit packages.
In these cases there may be implications with the Revenue Commissioners regarding redundancy payments.
Mr Bakhurst said that RTÉ has written to Revenue about this.
Speaking tonight, he said that this was an “RTÉ liability as I understand it”.
He added: “I don’t think the amounts are huge, I’d rather there weren’t amounts, but we have written to Revenue to tell them there could be these liabilities and if there are, obviously RTÉ will pay them.”
Reports’ findings are ‘appalling’, says committee chair
The Oireachtas Media Committee is to invite RTÉ management and board members to appear before it on 14 February.
New invitations will be issued to Ms Forbes and the broadcaster’s Director of Content Jim Jennings who is on illness leave.
Former director of strategy Rory Coveney will also be asked to attend as will past RTÉ Board members, including Moya Doherty and Ian Kehoe.
Committee Chairperson Niamh Smyth described the findings of today’s report on voluntary exit schemes as “appalling”.
She said the decisions taken by the “inner circle” had negatively impacted an organisation on its knees financially.
Staff ‘exhausted with relentless revelations’ – unions
In August 2023, RTÉ announced that McCann Fitzgerald would analyse the context in which voluntary exit schemes in 2017 and 2021 commenced and operated.
It came after the broadcaster was asked to investigate the voluntary exit package that was granted to Ms O’Keeffe.
She told politicians at the Oireachtas Committee on Media in July 2023 that she had availed of a package.
She left RTÉ in March 2020 and was replaced by Richard Collins.
At the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee in July 2023, the broadcaster’s then-Interim Deputy Director General Adrian Lynch said that her package had never come to the executive board for sign off.
Unions at RTÉ also raised questions about Ms O’Keeffe’s package, saying clarification was needed regarding her exit package as a new chief financial officer had been appointed and there had been “no change to the executive board”.
A statement from the Trade Union Group said employees were “exhausted with the relentless revelations”.
“Members of staff in RTÉ again expressed their outrage at senior management failures at the national broadcaster, following the publication of the McCann Fitzgerald report into the operation of Voluntary Exit Programmes in 2017 and 2020
“The report concludes that an exit package availed of by former Chief Financial Officer, Breda O’Keeffe, had not been signed-off by the Executive Board, ultimately responsible for final decisions on all applications and did not, therefore, comply with the terms of the 2017 programme,” the statement said.
It added: “Staff are exhausted with the relentless revelations due to shoddy governance while dealing at the same time with the challenges they now face as a consequence.
“Despite this, workers in RTÉ strive every day to provide quality services to the public as they try to rebuild the trust that has been lost.”
RTÉ News has attempted to contact Ms O’Keeffe for comment on the findings of the review, but she has made no comment so far.
Additional reporting Mícheál Lehane, Fergal O’Brien