This is not a Ryan Tubridy scandal.. it's an RTE scandal

Noel Kelly comes out batting for ex-Late Late host

- FERGHAL BLANEY

AGENT Noel Kelly yesterday placed all of the blame at RTE’s door for the secret payments made to his client, declaring: “This is not a Ryan Tubridy scandal. This is an RTE scandal.” 

At one stage at the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee Mr Kelly said about the payments issue: “I think there have been a lot of lies.”

The agent repeatedly insisted over six hours of questions that when he personally drew up two €75,000 invoices for “consultancy fees” – despite knowing they were for Mr Tubridy – he did it “under instructions from RTE”.

Social Democrats TD, Catherine Murphy, compared the words which Mr Kelly used repeatedly to the infamous defence offered by Nazis at the Nuremberg trials after World War II, where they said they were “just following orders”.

Ms Murphy said: “This following instructions, it’s called the Nuremberg defence.”

Mr Kelly insisted that he and Mr Tubridy knew nothing about RTE forking out €150,000 for the two instalments which were meant to be for sponsorship work for Renault until the scandal broke last month.

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He claimed a €75,000-a-year deal for doing Renault gigs was not negotiated to offset pay cuts when he was agreeing a new contract for the Late Late host.

And he vehemently asserted that Mr Tubridy still took a pay cut dur in g Covid despite the €75,000 payments because they were separate commercial deals.

Mr Kelly told the exasperated TDs: “RTE did not just suggest the idea of a contract with Renault, they oversaw its development and implementation. We were happy with that.