Gavan Reilly: Is RTÉ’s white knight all he’s cracked up to be?

Columnist’s curse: by the time you read this, what I’m about to tell you might seem like no valuable insight at all. There’s a chance you might even have seen Leo Varadkar standing up in the Dáil and saying something like what I’m about to type. But it’s Monday night, and the deadline is looming, so here’s my hot insight.

The Cabinet are starting to get really, really worried about RTÉ – and specifically about Kevin Bakhurst as the man to completely rehabilitate its reputation.

First, it’s important to say one thing: the drive for transparency and full disclosure from RTÉ means the national broadcaster is caught in a vicious cycle. Some of its former top brass might have their own agendas but as an institution, RTÉ simply cannot turn down an invitation to an Oireachtas committee. That in itself is a publicity problem because there are so many older skeletons in its closet. So when Bakhurst is invited in, and has to disclose that someone got a redundancy payment of €450,000 when her role wasn’t even redundant, it’s bad news.

That said, in the last few days there is a political concern that the controversy is no longer about the skeletons of the past: rather about the handling of the present. That’s where the halo effect around Bakhurst begins to fade: until now he has been putting out other people’s fires, but in the last few days the story has become about how he fights his own.

Rory Coveney told the world he had resigned as director of strategy last summer. Even before Kevin Bakhurst formally took over, it was clear that the dark cloud of the Toy Show Musical was not going to shift. The day before Bakhurst was due to start, he announced Coveney had tendered his resignation immediately as “the tough job ahead of him would be made somewhat easier if he had a fresh lead team”.

In that light you’d be perfectly entitled to think Coveney, voluntarily giving up the job, had paddled out on his own canoe. Yet it now emerges that Bakhurst - who, again, was not even in charge by then - had negotiated that Coveney would get a year’s salary to quietly disappear into the night.

The new DG has since argued that the golden handshake wasn’t secret, and that it was good business sense: the organisation needed to turn a new leaf with a new senior team, and if Coveney hadn’t warranted a firing then he needed to be given a financial incentive to walk away.

All of that might well be true, but here’s the problem: it’s not what RTÉ said. In the middle of the regime change, where the broadcaster was promising maximum transparency and Bakhurst was charged with the singular job of rehabbing the place, RTÉ allowed Coveney to put out a statement that was simply and objectively misleading.

That, at least, is the deal people know about. We still have no idea about the payoff to Richard Collins - which makes the situation all the more confusing. At least in Coveney’s case there was a (belated) rationale for the departure. There is no publicly stated rationale in the case of the chief financial officer – you’ll remember him, he’s the one who couldn’t remember offhand what his salary was.

RTÉ has never said whether his role was made redundant or not. While he wasn’t included in Bakhurst’s reformed senior management team, the person who ostensibly replaced him – Mike Fives, the group financial controller – had been in the job for over a year already. But whatever the reason, not only was Collins paid off to go away, a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) was bundled into the deal.

For there to be an NDA in Collins’ case, but not that of Coveney, suggests the circumstances were materially different.

The differing treatment certainly warrants inquiry, and ought to have raised some questions internally in RTÉ as well as externally for the government. And, of course, the most salient point is: Bakhurst again was responsible for approval this deal. The very man who made a virtue of turning over a new leaf in a time of massive financial threat, was issuing hefty cheques to make the ghosts of scandals past simply go away.

This brings me back to the government’s wobbles.

On Monday, Bakhurst announced he was seeking fresh legal advice on whether there were any circumstances in which Collins’ departure deal could be disclosed. One Cabinet minister was withering in their analysis, texting to say: ‘He wants credit for trying to uncover a secret deal that he himself signed off on? That’s b******t.’

Other matters of topics are important too.

Dee Forbes never granted requests for interviews from non-RTÉ outlets: in times of strife she wouldn’t take up invites to come on Virgin Media or Newstalk. Bakhurst’s early era was a breath of fresh air: he understood the responsibility to appear everywhere, and tell as big an audience as possible that RTÉ would change. On Monday, Bakhurst subjected himself to a 20-minute grilling from Sarah McInerney, but gave only 80 seconds to reporters assembled outside his meeting at the Department of Media.

These things are all noticed by those in charge. The government can’t save RTÉ – including writing massive cheques to subsidise its operations this year – unless RTÉ makes clear its desire to save itself. The first doubts are now beginning to creep in.