Alan Kelly says some of yesterday’s rebuttal from Ryan Tubridy was ‘non-sense’.
The local Labour TD is a member of the Public Accounts Committee and has been commenting following yesterday’s highlight anticipated meetings with the Broadcaster and his agent.
He told Tipp Today that he was annoyed that the 39 page document was only delivered to the members at 8.23 ahead of the meeting at 10am, making it impossible for thorough examination prior.
Deputy Kelly went on to day that initially he felt the rebuttal proved was strong, however, there were elements he didn’t buy :
“the other issue which, look, as far as I am concerned, it is non-sense to say that Ryan Tubridy took a 20% pay cut, blatant non-sense because if you are looking at those 75,000 payments then obviously there is nowhere near that level of pay cut so to be saying that was ridiculous in my view. SO as the day went on I think it got more difficult for the two individuals. But certainly there was an awful lot of questions raised as well for RTE which we will raise tomorrow with PAC.”
There was some criticism that the two Committees repeated a lot of the questions that others before them had asked.
Deputy Kelly also told Tipp Today that there wasn’t much time for consultation as they were given documentation late however, he did explain that members will often have different approaches to such questioning:
“I also try not to ask the same question as the person before, but if you are the tenth speaker every question has nearly been asked so I try to double down or tease into something that hasn’t been fully brought through or something like that or something that the witness has already said, there is no point in asking the same question again you will just get the same answer back. Look let’s be honest about it some people want to get certain comments out so they can use it for heir own radio station for want of a better phrase, I just try to get the information as much as I can and as directly as I can.”
