Doherty: Minister’s RTÉ scandal is ‘public humiliation of a public servant’

Pearse Doherty says Minister Catherine Martin’s assertion that she did not expect to be asked  on a television interview whether she had confidence in the now departed RTÉ Board Chair as “guff.”

Ms Martin, the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media of Ireland, faced questions at the Oireachtas Media Committee following the resignation of Dunfanaghy-native Siún Ní Raghallaigh as the RTÉ Board Chair.

The committee was called for the oversight of RTÉ’s expenditure of public funds, governance issues, plans for longer-term support and funding for public service media. 

Ms Martin, Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media of Ireland, said that Ms Ní Raghallaigh indicated she may resign if a letter was sent from the department -  before the minister spoke on Prime Time on RTÉ television and expressed no confidence in the RTÉ Board Chair. 

At the Oireachtas Committee, Ms Martin stuck to her original statement, that she was misinformed about the exit packages and “could not express confidence.”

Ms Ní Raghallaigh resigned several hours after the minister’s appearance on Prime Time, in what Deputy Doherty, Finance Spokesperson for Sinn Féin, described as a “tantamount to a public humiliation of a public servant who has served this state for many years. What you did in effect was ensure that she was pushed over the cliff.”

Referring to the minister’s statement that the question regarding her confidence in the RTÉ chair was unexpected, Mr Doherty said: “There is nobody in this house that would be so naive to swallow that guff.”

It was previously revealed that the minister wanted to express her disappointment in a letter to the former chair Ms Ní Raghallaigh about being misinformed twice on the exit package of former chief financial officer, Richard Collins.

According to Ms Martin, Ms Ní Raghallaigh informed her department officials that she would not be prepared to accept a letter from the media minister.

Speaking of the former chair, Ms Martin said: "I thought she was a great chair, but the crucial piece is I have to be in possession of the facts.”

The minister said she had been misinformed on two occasions by Ms Ni Raghallaigh about the board’s involvement in approving exit packages for former RTÉ executives.

During Prime Time the minister twice declined to express confidence in Ms Ní Raghallaigh and said she sought a meeting for Friday morning.

The minister told Prime Time that she was “deeply disappointed” that she was twice misinformed about exit packages with departing executives from the embattled station.

In her departing statement, Ms Ní Raghallaigh claimed that the Minister had been informed of the payoff package.

“Kevin Bakhurst brought the exit of Rory Coveney from RTÉ, announced on Sunday, July 9, to my attention, while the exit of Richard Collins was brought to and approved by the Remuneration Committee of the Board of RTÉ on October 9 2023,” Ms Ní Raghallaigh said.

“However, I neglected to recollect that Richard Collins’s exit package did go before the Remuneration Committee. This was not an intentional misrepresentation, and I subsequently contacted the Department to clarify the details and remind them that I had previously appraised them of the matter in October.”