'We've lost confidence' in RTÉ chief over €200k for Coveney

RTÉ’s Kevin Bakhurst has lost the confidence of a number of Cabinet ministers, according to the Irish Daily Mail.

Mr Bakhurst has insisted that he would not resign amid ongoing revelations over ‘golden handshakes’ given to senior

executives since he took over at the broadcaster last July.

Having been appointed to the role to usher in a new era of transparency and stronger governance, the ‘drip feed’ of revelations on exit packages has frustrated the Cabinet, prompting Media Minister Catherine Martin to summon him to a crunch meeting yesterday.

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It followed a statement by Mr Bakhurst on Saturday revealing that RTÉ’s former head of strategy Rory Coveney had received an estimated €200,000 as part of a deal to leave the national broadcaster.

Kevin Bakhurst and RTE Board chair Siun Ni Raghallaigh. Pic: Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews.ie

In a ‘provocative’ interview following that meeting yesterday, Mr Bakhurst accused Oireachtas members of urging him to ‘break the law’ by breaking the confidentiality of severances he agreed with RTÉ executives.

A Cabinet source said: ‘Our confidence in Bakhurst has been ebbing away since Saturday. None of us expected that statement about Rory Coveney’s pay-off.

‘In fact, we were holding the line as few of us were even aware of what it was.’

Another minister said: ‘Bakhurst is getting this the wrong way around. What we can’t understand is why he agreed to confidentiality clauses in the first place on these agreements. He didn’t have to do that. Had there been no confidentiality clauses, we wouldn’t be here, and we would have the full transparency that Bakhurst promised us last summer.’

Minister Catherine Martin. Pic: Sasko Lazarov/Photocall Ireland

Another Cabinet source said: ‘I found some of the things he said in Monday interviews were provocative. I had some confidence in him last summer, as I thought he was performing well. Now he’s not performing well and a lot of these recent mistakes are his, and he needs to take ownership of them.’

Another minister said that Mr Bakhurst’s latest series of disclosures about severance payments had ‘blindsided’ the Government and had not been agreed.

Asked by the Irish Daily Mail if he should resign, given his commitment to transparency upon entering RTÉ and the revelations of exit payments made under his watch, Mr Bakhurst said yesterday: ‘No, absolutely not.’

RTE director general Kevin Bakhurst . Pic: Niall Carson/PA Wire

He added: ‘I stand entirely by what I’ve done about trying to move the organisation forward with a new leadership team and make payments which are in the best interest, and in the best value for RTÉ.’

But the Government is concerned that there may be problems around confidentiality clauses with RTÉ executives. A senior Government source confirmed that the statement on Saturday had not been cleared with the Government, nor had they been warned of it.

‘I am just mystified at a lot of Bakhurst’s performance,’ said a Cabinet source. ‘He has promised better transparency, and people in Government warned him at the weekend that full disclosure on severance payments was required for us to retain confidence in him.

‘However, it appears he is now hamstrung by confidentiality clauses. But they are confidentiality clauses he agreed.’

Another noted: ‘Bakhurst was negotiating in a position of strength, where certain people had performed so appallingly in their jobs, and ignored basic governance guidelines, that they could summarily been dismissed. And now, to the public at large, they are seeing once again that it appears impossible to sack someone in the public service no matter how badly they’ve performed.’

Toy Show: The Musical. Pic: Ste Murray

Mr Bakhurst and the chair of the RTÉ board Siún Ní Raghallaigh were hauled in before Media Minister Ms Martin yesterday, who said she did not want to see ‘eye-watering’ golden handshakes at RTÉ ever again.

Questions have now emerged over whether Mr Bakhurst should have sought Government approval for the exit packages. A spokesman for RTÉ has said the broadcaster ‘did not require approval’ from the Department of Public Expenditure on this occasion to grant Mr Coveney – the driving force behind €2.2million flop Toy Show The Musical – a fee of around €200,000. Anne O’Leary, chair of RTÉ’s Audit and Risk Committee, told members of the Oireachtas Media Committee last week that Mr Coveney and the former director general Dee Forbes ‘deliberately circumvented’ procedure around the musical venture to get it on stage and avoided risk assessment.

Mr Bakhurst is now seeking updated legal advice about revealing the details and value of exit payments made to Mr Coveney, who joined RTÉ in 2007, and the former chief financial officer Richard Collins, who both left RTÉ since the director general’s appointment.

Rory Coveney. Pic: Norma Burke/RollingNews.ie

Ms Martin also told Mr Bakhurst that confidentiality agreements around exit packages ‘should certainly be the exception and not the norm’. Ms Martin has asked RTÉ to consider capping exit payments.

Mr Bakhurst defended his stance on RTÉ’s Drivetime, remarking: ‘I’ve had a career of more than 30 years, the law is pretty clear at the moment about not revealing some of this stuff. And it’s quite unusual for me to be put in a position where I’m actually being asked by elected officials to break the law.

‘I had a discussion with the minister about pursuing every avenue possible, which is what I said would do, on achieving maximum transparency and the minister is very well aware of Ireland’s employment laws of the legal constraints.’ When asked if he is considering capping exit payments he said it was ‘something we’ll look at’.

Mr Bakhurst detailed how Mr Coveney offered to resign in July of last year. He said: ‘It was then a question of on what terms would he leave. Rory had been here for 16 years. There were absolutely no grounds to sack Rory on.’

He said after taking legal advice, he was attempting to avoid a potentially costly battle at the Labour Court if Mr Coveney took a wrongful dismissal case.

‘We agreed on the sum which was way less than that and avoided any legal costs quite quickly,’ he added. ‘And I have to say Rory never pushed for any more money beyond that.

‘I thought it was a fair sum given the length of his career here.’