Will Dee Forbes ever be held accountable and be fit to be questioned over RTE?

[BOOTS52PollyPrissyPants]

Would love to hear your views as find it strange she has not been questioned at all but she knew all that was going on.

I had forgotten about her tbh! I would imagine, in true irish tradition, she will slink away unpunished. The entire investigation was a joke from start to finish. Plus ca change, plus la meme chose 🙄

If she's been sick for 7 months I assume she won't be showing her face on the RTE stuff again.

She didn't participate in the Grant Thornton report into Toy Show the Musical which would have entailed an interview or written responses and all names are anonymised in the report. So not a big deal in my opinion for her to participate?

Well tbh it's quite a big deal to oversee the clusterfuck that was RTE and its finances and just disappear with no accountability whatsoever. But seemingly that's just the way of it.

@Chickenkeev by not a big deal I mean that a person would have to be very sick not to be able to do 1 interview or provide written responses in order to participate in the report.

Sorry, misinterpreted you. The whole thing stinks tbh, but i'd be shocked if anything ever came of it.

Shocking but typical 'lessons will be learned crap' here and she should be made to give evidence and to talk and not be protected.

I agree.
She was paid big bucks as the head of RTE and yet when the sh*t hit the fan she wasn't around to answer the vital questions.
Sadly that's Ireland for you.
No accountability

It seems to me there needs to be a major overhaul of RTE. the model of partly public funded/partly private doesn't work.
There isn't proper or adequate governance or independent checks.
presumably it is the job of the board to oversee the executive and make major decisions. what is their response to the utter clusterfuck? Were they just rubber stamping anything brought up at meetings? Were they lied to? If so, by who?
I work for a small non profit organisation and if we didn't have audited accounts, a board of directors that oversee everything, reporting to all funders, declaration of what monies came in and how it was spent, rules and regulations for any "in kind" gifts or services, codes of conducts, adherence to governance codes, reports to Charity regulator, CRO, etc,... we would be shut down sharpish. The bar is high, as it should be.

It's typical though isn't? The smaller you are, the more the oversight. And glaring messes like RTE are ignored.

What would you suggest instead of part publicly funded part commercial? The Future of Media Commission thought it was the only viable way to fund the organisation.

Imo, it's not the model, it's the oversight of it. And ultimately that's the government's responsibility. And they've seemingly been asleep at the wheel for years. They're the ones in charge of the oversight bodies, and none of them are doing their jobs.

I personally think RTE should go as it is bias anyway in it's reporting and barely reports on other parts of the country except Dublin.
Too much fraud over the years and people are sick of it.

Then we'll only have commercial broadcasters when are accountable only to their shareholders. That won't be any better.

I would suggest we have, something like, one channel that is funded by the licence fee and another by advertising revenue. So for example Rte 1 would be the public broadcaster, have no ads, showcase original irish content and Rte 2 would be funded by ads, and use this funding to buy in their programming.
But the major problem I see, is that there was a major failure in governance, overseeing and accountability. Just moving off the CFO and Dee Forbes is not going far enough, the system needs an overhaul and far more stringent policies. I didn't care so much that this presenter got this or this presenter got that more so the system that made it possible. When you are using taxpayer's money, you have an absolute duty to use it wisely and transparently.

Is she still getting her full salary? In most parts of the public sector she'd be being told to get back in the office at this stage. Admittedly, if she resigns they might find it a little more complicated to get her to testify, but I'm sure there are pathways.

She resigned last summer.

fair play

My honest answer is that until the law is updated to force people like Dee Forbes and others who lived it large during the Celtic Tiger years and took money that was and is WAY above their pay scale by dubious means, particularly if they worked in a publicly funded company, to be accountable for their actions, or the downside would be that their personal accounts would be frozen or to an amount of money that would be a paltry weekly allowance, they won't be asked to be accountable.

The Gardaí need to be called in here and forensic accountants go over every single cent of money spent and try to reclaim as much of it back but it's the almighty tax payer that foots the bill once again.

RTÉ is in financial trouble (has been long before Kevin Backhurst rolled up) but what they do is they launch a fucking musical based on a once a year show on the Late Late Show. How they thought that would bring the money in I have no idea.

If I was investigating the amounts of public money 'spent' (for spent see wasted or lost) during her stewardship, I'd be asking for a weekly note from her GP to explain her continued 'sickness'.
Any photographs that have been taken of her over the months she doesn't look like she's on any long term medical treatment plan so at this point I'd be looking for medical notes if I was in the Oireachtas Committees.

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
It's utterly sickening that she waltzes off into the sunset probably with a fabulous pension despite not having to face questions from the Dáil Committee.
Unlike her former colleagues who must be raging that they were the ones facing the music.
The buck stopped with her.

If she is genuinely unwell and unable to answer the important questions I retract what I write here.

If it's a MH issue though, it doesn't 'look' like ànything. So that makes no sense. Equally, one can claim MH and it's hard to disprove. In any event, she was shit at her job.

Its a total disgrace. 2 fingers to her enployers and the irish tax payer.i do understand if she is infact sick but it just feels like stonewalling/ avoidance as its going on so long
All these govt dept heads have no respect for the funds they seem to be allocated as zero accountability..if she is never held account it gives a green light to everyone else.
That toy show musical was the idea of two late late employees.i mean seriously it tanked .how did they receive RTE money. Its like the Toy Show audience. Friends of rte employees or is that an urban myth ??

Didn't they give a former chief financial officer a redundancy package that wasn't approved and she wasn't entitled to it as someone replaced her.

The previous CFO was awarded an "exit package", but instead of going through the Board as it was meant to, it was approved by Dee Forbes. This was found out during the review of RTE, so a reliable source.
Not sure how much she got, there have been reports of 400K, but that's from press so unsure of accuracy.
So it looks as if they were playing fast and loose with money, and when it was all going to come to light they fell on their swords after giving each other golden handshake "exit deals". Current director seems to be saying that this was then, now with different management all is hunky dory. But there are no signs as to how they would prevent the situation happening again or consequences for mismanagement of funds.

She has since stated not fit to attend or make another comment. What the hell is wrong with her and if this was any other person in a normal job would have been an investigation immediately but no she leaves with big pension and pay out. Makes me sick to the core. She wasn't sick when doing dodgy deals.