Not a good look. I wonder did he go because this was going to come to light?
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Well at long last you are being vindicated. I know more stories like yours and mine will come out.
I’ve always paid it.
No more.
Count to look away.
Or couldn’t….and that’s why he got the gig..
Presumably he was the only applicant who could count.
The guards role is to investigate.
I cannot confirm if fraud has occurred (I'm presuming you can't either as neither of us has access to RTE accounts etc.
There are enough questions unanswered here to justify Garda involvement
It increasingly looks like he was purposely chosen as a soft touch. They didn't want someone in who would rock the boat and start asking hard questions.
He comes across as a bit of a useful idiot type. Probably just happy to go along with it and say he is CFO at RTE when there is alarm bells going off all over the place.
Interesting in the local area they are running a poll on who will renew TV license
11% say they don't pay already
But the big number is 63% who have paid before say they won't pay moving forward.
FAS was a government entity so nobody could stop paying, in reality RTE is as well but mass non payment of tv license will cripple the place.
Who owns the barter agency? Who is pocketing the 35% or is it more? NK has owned companies in the UK. A solutions company, I think? Has an NK business in the UK ever been hired by RTE? Has an NK business in the UK had any dealings with RTE?
Gas NK ever had any dealings with discovery?
Earlier this year Bono was doing a tour around the world promoting his latest book. Bono was telling stories and singing some songs and the Irish leg of the tour was in the Olympia. A friend of mine tried to get tickets for the Irish leg and could not. It seems a lot of tickets went to RTE staff and board members.
My friend did manage to catch Bono on his tour. He saw him in New York and Paris. But it's strange that he could not see Bono in Dublin.
How Richard Collins got his job as CFO in an organisation as big as RTÉ funded largely by public money needs an investigation in itself. It’s simply incredible that his first CFO position in his career is in a job this big with so much responsibility for public money - you would think the successful candidate would have prior experience of this level of seniority and in a CFO role?
Are we seriously supposed to believe that no other existing CFO applied??? If he was the best candidate I can’t imagine how bad the others were.
In the course of my career I’ve never seen a CFO come across as badly and be less impressive than Collins was today. He was an absolute disaster. I doubt he even realizes or as many have pointed out has the humility to realize how badly he came across today.
Reading that now, champions league tickets, ffs
Haha well put :)
The CFO said around 1million or 1.25million had been through the barter account in 10 years I think.
I'm curious if that is including the 35% fees.
Because 350,000 is a lot of taxpayers money to throw away fees alone never mind the actual wastage in the account itself m
Your book might be different from the law. Corporate entertainment isn't against the law.
I'm not saying what RTE did was right, but it mightn't be against the law.
Thanks for that summary!
Incredible, really
Corruption is paid by the poor it seems.
What I dont get about the barter account is that there was actual money paid out from it. Whether it is an actual bank account with money in it, or it is a virtual account for the books only, (and its not clear which we are talking about here), actual money needed to be paid for the expenses incurred out of it eg the 80K for the Japan trip, RTs 230K which went to a UK account etc......
Now the CFO has said it was operated by the commercial team and was outside the remit of finance. But finance holds the whole budget. It gets money from the government to run RTEs operations, and the advertising revenue so at some point, the commercial department was handed a wadge of actual money every year to run their department. FInance knows the salaries of everyone in the department and the running costs so there was X amount left over which had to be the money used for the barter account. It makes no sense that they say they did not know. They might not know the details of what it was spent on or that it was called a "barter account", but they know that the commercial department is given RunningCosts+X every year and they are not asking what X is used for. I do not understand how money can flow in and out of an account without someone from finance knowing about it - where else other than finance did commercial get the money for the barter account?
So when the CFO is asked did you know about the barter account he can say No. But if he is asked did you know that every year Commercial was given a hundreds of thousands of a budget that was surplus to their running costs, maybe the answer to that question would be Yes.
I'm surprised that the CFO didn't take what would have been the obvious stance in all of this.
"I joined in 2020, it was a challenging period for a lot of reasons and there were a lot of legacy fires to fight, so I concentrated on implementing better standards and procedures at the ground level and focusing on those things I could change immediately. With so much to be done I didn't second guess those above me, if the boss had already signed off on a payment I did not devote time to reviewing her decisions, I just moved on to other issues. In hindsight this trust was misplaced and I should have been looking up as well as looking down."
Yes it throws Forbes under the bus but that has happened anyway, and it would have garnered if not sympathy, at least some understanding. I have seen plenty of good staff get overruled by the boss, we all have at some point.
But I suppose a statement like the above requires some humility, and from what I watched the CFO has precious little of that.
Noel Kelly is the epitome of Celtic tiger scum. Ripped off the country at will. Snake. His business must be investigated- top to bottom.
Siun Ni Raghalligh is from Donegal.
Dee Forbes - langerland
Anne O'Leary - langerland
Geraldine O'Leary - langerland
Deirdre McCarthy - langerland
Rory Coveney - langerland
I'm detecting a trend
Heard end of a Radio 1 program “Ronan Coveney produced” Keep it in the family.
And imagine every 1 euro they spent on this feckin account 51c of it was added as a fee?
did we get any insight as to why these fees were so high?
Tip of the iceberg for sure.
Well done to Brian stanly and the rest of the TDs today.
Undercut him for what lol? grubby little deal - he did in his hoop do consultancy for them - just a way to move the money around.
Given the values involved, how on earth were they not compelled to use OJEU or similar? Surely someone would have undercut NK?
There was 100 percent fraud and theft taking place. You cant decide to use company funds and tax payer funds for entertainment. To buy tickets for matches and foreign travel. That in my book is theft.
License due next month. Money was put aside to pay it. FUCK THAT. It's going on a Ring camera doorbell that I've wanted for ages. Guess who won't be opening the door to anyone they don't know.
About 60-70% of the questions were directed at the CFO who deadbatted a proportion of those with "I dunno", "...in hindsight" and "that was agreed before I started at RTE" and "I wasn't involved". There was general incredulity at how many questions he failed to ask about financial matters that appeared, as a layman, to be within his duty to ask. He didn't do a lot to defend himself - it appears that there was a general culture to not question things that came from the top and that once things were signed off - and not even signed off, even a verbal agreement could be could be good enough it seems - that was enough to take "comfort from", as the man himself said.
All throughout it was remarkable how little note-taking or minutes had occurred in meetings throughout the years. There was absolute comedy gold at one point when the CFO appeared to not know, under direct questioning, how much his own salary was - before he finally 'fessed up and admitted it was 200k, with a 25k car allowance. He fairly worked for it today.
There was general murkiness about a lot things specific to RT and NKM. Perhaps he knew in advance of him leaving the LL of "irregularities" said the acting DG. And while they were at pains to insist that nothing illegal had taken place, they didn't sound entirely confident either: perhaps "the tax-payer may have been defrauded" said the CFO in relation to how payments were made and invoiced, and the head of legal affairs at RTE conceded that 150,000 marked as "consultancy fees" was highly "inappropriate". The chair of the board also referred to payments "being designed to deceive". It also finally came out that RT has no contract at the moment, since May31st, - the acting DG made a face when that was put to him like he'd never thought of it that way before. So, even though they have stated he's getting paid the "radio portion" of some contract they don't actually appear to know anything about the terms of this contract, but don't worry, there could be some "verbal agreement" in place. They still have no idea about the additional 120k relating to 2017-19, even if it was actually paid out. NKM clearly had massive outsized influence in how deals were thrashed out in RTE.
What exactly was going on with this curious barter account took the majority of the attention in the second half of the meeting. Most expressed total shock and - not entirely credible - surprise at the existence of this account, which seems to be some sort of black-hole where you could just spunk money on whatever, if you knew of its existence: 26k on Champions League tickets, 100k+ on rugby tickets and who knows what else. It was under the care of the commercial department - not something for the plebs in finance to concern themselves about - and the big-cheeses there seem to have been allowed to do whatever with it, without having to worry about much in the way of oversight. The head of commercial, Geraldine O' Leary, got grilled a bit on what perks she might have procured from it over the years - trips to Japan for the rugby World Cup, tickets to U2 with transportation, days out and dinner at the K-Club - and she might have had to sweat a bit, but she seemed cool enough under pressure. Being due for retirement in just over a month will do that for you.
The committee requested lots and lots of additional documents out of those notoriously fastidious note-takers in RTE. Generally though the committee members were more prepared and precise in their questions than on Wednesday
This is going to run and run. The rock is just beginning to be pulled up on whatever was going on. There's no doubt piles and piles of money unaccounted for and once things start to be examined there'll be more people hauled in. Wouldn't be surprised to see the CFO resign - he was pretty disastrous at times today - but I think he's also carrying the can for others and a widespread, deep-rooted culture of bad governance at the very top.
Sorry I meant the director of content. The guy who had the operation.
It's clear from today Noel Kelly is just one of many many issues.
The book ultimately stops with the board. They could say no to his demands if they were competent.
If we thought it would be hard enough to collect the licence fee after yesterday well after today there is not a **** chance.
I can't believe people have actually been imprisoned (in one case someone was brought to Mountjoy from Donegal) while these folks were off spending 26k to go to the champions league final.
It really and truly is astounding.
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