Ryan Tubridy and agent offer to help parliamentary committee probes into RTE

RTE presenter Ryan Tubridy and his agent have expressed a willingness to co-operate with parliamentary committee probes into the payments and governance scandal at Ireland’s national broadcaster.

A solicitor representing Tubridy and his agent Noel Kelly has written to both the Oireachtas parliament’s Media Committee and Public Accounts Committee indicating a desire to clarify a number of matters and provide “important information”.

RTE has been engulfed in crisis after revelations last month that it underreported the salary paid to former Late Late Show host Tubridy and failed to disclose 345,000 euro of additional payments to him between 2017 to 2022, some of which were processed through a commercial “barter” account.

The broadcaster acknowledged the existence of further barter accounts in statements on Tuesday night, despite chief financial officer Richard Collins telling the Public Accounts Committee last week that there was only one such account.

Senior executives from RTE are to face a grilling over the use of multiple barter accounts as they appear before the parliamentary committee on media.

On Tuesday, the Government announced two separate external reviews of RTE and also moved to send in a forensic auditor to examine the broadcaster’s accounts.

The Media Committee is due to meet at 1.30pm on Wednesday to ask further questions to RTE board members and executives, as well as the former chairwoman of the RTE board, Moya Doherty, and former chief financial officer Breda O’Keeffe.

RTE’s executive and board have said they will address the issue of the additional barter accounts during the session.