Dee Forbes banging the RTE TV licence drum again 60m uncollected fee *poll not working - pl ignore*

I think today's revelations were worse than what was revealed at the previous Oireachtas meetings given the fact the board and Bakhurst knew they would be heavily scrutinized for everything in the future, they still didn't care about the impact of their actions.

Does anyone know what the non-renewal rate is for the license currently?

This 'redundancy' payment doesn't meet the criteria for Revenue's termination payments as it does not appear to be a genuine redundancy and RTE have already said that they "will bear the cost of tax liabilities arising from voluntary exit payments".

If Revenue treat this as a normal/ex-gratia payment (they likely will) the tax bill could be larger than the actually payment of €450k to O'Keefe. This is because the payment will be treated as the net figure and the amount will have to be recalculated to calculate the gross payment.

As this happened in March 2020, there will also be penalties and interest due too, which will put the total cost of this 'redundancy' well in excess of €1m.

Tubridy's under the counter payments pale in comparison to this and at least he paid the tax on his payments.

That's some bunch of sick notes.

Wonder if their HR Director could comment as to whether it is out of trend for RTE?

Anyhow, enough moaning, got to get up and try do a fair day's work...for a fair da...........

Those absences are incredibly damning.

They’ve been badly advised. They would have been better off facing up and trying to convince people they were just poor at their jobs.

The only conclusion, in their absence, is that they are afraid to face the music are couldn’t find ANY argument to put forward as a defence.

They need to feel the sentiment of society every time they step foot outside their comfy little environments.

Scumbags.

It's weird alright that Tubridys secret payments have revealed all these other dodgy dealings. I am sure if Grant Thornton did a deep dive they would find a whole lot more. Their remit was to investigate issues that were blurted out at a toothless committee but I think we all know we are at the tip of the iceberg still.

These people are from the shirt and tie ilk.....they also probably mingle with some very important people so dont be surprised when it comes out that they can't be touched by revenue or anyone else for that matter.

Meanwhile, the ordinary joe soap is up in court non payment of tv license..

Its a great wee country

All pension payments to former executives of RTE should be stopped until this scadal is over...all redundancy payments and access to monies already given out should be frozen until its all cleared by revenue....but they won't.

They get privilege in the committee I believe.

She would have some neck going down a legal line to seek even more money off the tax payer. But who knows.

I still dont get why you would pay someone 450K to leave. Surely there are less expensive options.

Meanwhile, Bakhurst also told the committee that 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.

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

Brendan Griffin, a Fine Gael TD, queried why RTÉ 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,” Bakhurst said.

“The main reason was because I thought that given what was emerging about RTÉ 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.”

This is just getting weirder.

I have to disagree, I don't it's Gross incompetence, this is what happens when there is no accountability or repercussions for those at the top. Just look at how all those people listed in another post of this thread were able to walk away and not attend the committee. This is not just RTE, even though this RTE debacle is highlighting but this is rife across the public sector. Look at how untouchable the elite are and by that I mean Government ministers/TD's, their advisors and Sec Gens are and also how dismissively they all treat these committees. They all want the big wages but none of the responsibility. I hope everyone of them involved in this debacle is shunned by everyone in the country so much so that they don't want to step outside their doors or they have to move out of the country.

One of the many opportunities missed when the Trioka were here was a reform of our corporate laws to make Public servants more accountable and with dire consequences such as being arrested and tried for any wrong doing and not being let off like we see here with a sick note. This is what Helen McEntee should be working on and not the "hurty words" bill but none of the elite want this, yes politicians will pretend like they do that that they want transparency and accountability at all levels but we all know that this the furthest thing from their mind.

There should be a deep dive done on every single Public service company/department now and allow no resignations or retirements till it is complete and use auditors from outside of the state to do it. If anyone thinks that this was/is just going on in RTE then they need to take their heads out of the sand. If it was me I would be starting with the HSE and what is going on there.