RTE’s Bakhurst pulled TV licence fee ads ‘as they would have been inappropriate’

RTE director general Kevin Bakhurst has said he pulled ads for the TV licence from other broadcasting platforms as he thought it would be “inappropriate” to demand people to pay the fee in the middle of the RTE scandal.

Mr Bakhurst said management were trying to do “everything we could” to re-establish trust with the Irish public.

Members of the RTE board are appearing before the Oireachtas Media Committee to answer questions about the transparency of RTE’s expenditure as well as governance issues.

It comes after a report into Toy Show The Musical – which recorded a 2.2 million euro loss after a single season in 2022 – found that formal approval by the board for the musical was neither sought nor provided, despite that being a requirement for projects with expenditure of above two million euros.

Fine Gael TD Brendan Griffin queried why RTE decided to pull advertising of the TV licence on channels outside its own platforms last July.

“Ultimately I made the decision for a number of reasons,” Mr Bakhurst said.

“The main reason was because I thought that given what was emerging about RTE at that stage, and the constant scandal that was unfolding, I thought it would be inappropriate for us to be paying for adverts demanding people to pay the licence fee.”

Mr Griffin was highly critical of this decision, claiming it was a deliberate attempt by the board to get rid of the licence fee and collapse revenues.

“Was this strategic? Is this part of hoping that the licence fee will ultimately fail and completely collapse and you’ll get what you were looking for,” the TD said.

Mr Bakhurst said: “Categorially not. It was done on two bases. One is we were in a position where we were really worried about cash flow. So we were looking at stopping discretionary spending.

“We did this in conjunction talking to the department and to An Post. We didn’t think it was appropriate to be spending licence payers’ money chasing them to pay licence fees when the scandal was unfolding. It was tone deaf at the time.

“I was trying to be respectful to the audience at that stage.”

He said the decision was agreed at board level.

Mr Bakhurst added: “We were doing everything we could to re-establish trust for the audience and I thought we needed to take some physical measures to re-establish trust before we should go out and demand people pay.”

Sinn Fein TD Imelda Munster questioned RTE director of human resources Eimear Cusack about her decision to sign off on an exit package paid to RTE’s former chief financial officer Breda O’Keeffe, which had not been brought before the executive board before being approved.

The exit package, believed to be worth 400,000 euros, did not comply with its redundancy scheme but was approved by former director general Dee Forbes.

Speaking to Ms Cusack at the committee, Ms Munster said: “If you were doing your job as director of HR, you could say I can’t sign that because it says ‘approved by the executive board’.

“If I sign that I will be party to a lie. At no stage did you intervene as head of HR, at no stage did you speak up and say what is being done here is wrong.

“Were you afraid of Dee Forbes? Were you afraid of questioning her. Were you afraid of tackling this?”

Ms Cusack said she “wasn’t afraid of Dee Forbes”, adding that she took full responsibility for the oversight in signing off the letter.

Ms Munster told Mr Bakhurst that it will be difficult to build up trust with the public when a board member who “never spoke up” is still on the executive board.

Mr Bakhurst said: “There have been consequences at most senior level in RTE.

“There have been consequences at executive level. I judge each individual case on its merits.

“Eimear made a mistake, she said that in this case. The one thing I would say is I have worked with many heads of HR in my time, Eimear is extremely good at head of HR.

“She is delivering change and fairness across the organisation.”

Speaking about ticket sales ahead of the show, board member Daire Hickey told the committee that he was told during a board meeting that sales for Toy Show The Musical were “going well”.

He said that during a meeting on September 13 2022, he was told by RTE’s former director of strategy Rory Coveney that while ticket sales during the summer were “slow”, they were now going “really, really well”.

Mr Hickey said that during another meeting in October 2022, former chief financial officer Richard Collins said there was to be a 300,000 euro profit based on ticket sales.

It also emerged that the cost threshold blocking RTE projects from going ahead without board approval has been halved after it was revealed that the musical, which did not receive a formal green light, accrued millions of euros in losses.

It comes after a report into the musical – which recorded a 2.2 million euro loss after a single season in 2022 – found that formal approval by the board for the musical was neither sought nor provided, despite this being a requirement for projects with expenditure of above two million euros.

It also found the board was not appropriately informed of the project throughout its development and the commercial risks were vastly underestimated.

RTE board chairwoman Siun Ni Raghallaigh apologised again to the Oireachtas Media Committee for deficiencies in governance.

She told TDs and senators that governance structures at RTE have been reformed and structured since the controversy.

In addition, the board now receives the minutes of all scheduled meetings of RTE’s interim leadership team.

Risk assessments are to be centralised in all decisions of the leadership team.

A new formal approval process has been established for major expenditure projects and 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.

Speaking at the start of the committee, chairwoman of the media committee Niamh Smyth said it was “regrettable” that a number of former board members could not attend the committee meeting.

She said: “It should also be noted that the following persons were also invited but regrettably have not been in a position to attend today.

“They are Dee Forbes, former director general of RTE, Geraldine O’Leary, former commercial director of RTE, Breda O’Keeffe, former chief financial officer at RTE, Jim Jennings, former director of content at RTE, Richard Collins, former chief financial officer at RTE, Conor Murphy, former board of RTE, Rory Coveney, former director of strategy at RTE, Moya Doherty, former chair of RTE, and Ian Hill, former deputy chair of the board of RTE.

“A number of the invited guests were unable to attend on the grounds of illness and ill health and we do wish them a speedy recovery.”