TUBS’ PAY | 

Staff demand that suspended RTÉ director general Dee Forbes attends committee meetings

‘SERIOUS ISSUES’ | 

Minister Simon Harris says RTÉ payments scandal has been ‘extraordinarily damaging’

“It is really important that all of the facts are put on the table and that the Oireachtas committee receives the full cooperation of RTÉ”

Yesterday at 17:04

Not all the facts have yet emerged about the RTÉ payments controversy, a Government minister said today, and there are “many outstanding questions to which answers are required.”

The Cabinet will discuss the RTÉ crisis at its meeting on Tuesday “and it is really important that all the facts are put on the table,” Higher Education Minister Simon Harris said today.

“There are very serious issues here to be explored, very serious corporate governance issues, and real questions that need to be answered,” Mr Harris said at a commemoration of former Taoiseach John A. Costello at Deansgrange Cemetery.

“It is really important that all of the facts are put on the table and that the Oireachtas committee receives the full cooperation of RTÉ, and that people at a very senior level attend and assist them with their work,” he said.

Minister Catherine Martin says RTÉ is nearly in an existential crisis

“Of course the Government is to further consider this matter on Tuesday, where my colleague, the Minister for Media Catherine Martin, will update us.

“It will be an opportunity to discuss in further detail, the external review that has been ordered and its requirements.

“I think the first thing we need to do is establish the facts, and they haven’t yet been established. There are many outstanding questions to which answers are required.”

He added: “I think even in today’s newspapers more is being learned in terms of questions that do need to be answered.

“I do believe in due process, however. I believe there’s an opportunity now for RTÉ to come before the committee [on Wednesday] and for key individuals who were involved in this to also come before it to answer questions — and for RTÉ to be forthcoming with that information.

“Catherine Martin had made it clear that any decisions on future taxpayer funding for RTÉ “are now on hold pending the outcome.

“The most important thing now is for trust to be rebuilt.

“It has been an extraordinarily damaging incident in relation to public trust,” Mr Harris said.

“Public service broadcasting matters. It matters a lot, and trust in broadcasting in general matters.

“I would also like to say that none of this in any way impugns the integrity and the work of those journalists in RTÉ who go into work today and continue to work hard to do to produce news content.

“’I’m thinking of all those people today who had nothing to do with this, and the environment in which they’re having to currently work.”

Meanwhile, senior executives from RTÉ will be quizzed on whether they previously “misled” members of the Oireachtas when discussing their finances, says Social Democrats TD Catherine Murphy.