The report into Toy Show The Musical highlights serious failings in governance oversight, financial management and appropriate control procedures with regard to the project. The facts the report sets out are clearly very disappointing and confirm what was already known, which is that there were failings of proper oversight and an absence of interrogation of the project by the board.
This speaks again to the culture within RTÉ at that time and the dysfunction that existed between the board and senior management. Since then, the chair, Ms Siún Ní Raghallaigh, and the director general, Mr. Kevin Bakhurst, have taken steps to ensure such dysfunction does not happen again.
The report, while bringing some clarity to the events surrounding the musical, did not name the individuals who engaged with Grant Thornton. I raised this issue with the chair of RTÉ when she briefed me on that report. This was also raised by the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport and Media. Further transparency has since been afforded by the revised version of the report, which was published this week. This does include the names of the majority of individuals involved who engaged with Grant Thornton. RTÉ staff members below the executive level are not named.
With regard to the McCann Fitzgerald report commissioned by RTÉ into the 2017 and 2021 voluntary exit programmes, I said that this showed an appalling disregard for the principles of equity, fairness and transparency in the treatment of staff, which prevailed at the time. I met the director general, Mr. Bakhurst, on the day of publication and he assured me that the control and oversight reforms introduced over the past number of months will ensure that this will not happen again.
As I previously stated, we need to uncover the detail of what has happened in the past to ensure it will not recur. Our imperative now must be to look to the future. Key to this will be the recommendations of the two independent expert advisory committees, which were commissioned by the Government to carry out reviews of governance, culture and HR matters at RTÉ. I arranged for copies of the Grant Thornton 3 and McCann FitzGerald reports to be forwarded to the expert advisory committees and they will help inform their work, which is nearing conclusion.
Finally, I have said all along that we need not only transparency but also accountability and only yesterday, representatives of RTÉ appeared before the Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport and Media, on which the Deputy sits, to account for their actions with regard to the reports.