Media Minister Catherine Martin has serious questions to answer about her own handling of the crisis in RT\u00c9, according to Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Minister is claiming she was kept in the dark about exit packages agreed with senior RT\u00c9 executives last year. If this is the case, then it is clear the Minister didn\u2019t ask the right questions when these resignations were announced.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen senior executives left RT\u00c9, the Minister apparently expressed no curiosity about the deals that underpinned these departures. This lack of curiosity is extremely troubling, given the Minister now feels she was led astray about the nature of these resignations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a further point that the Minister must now urgently clarify. In her resignation statement, the former Chair of the RTE board, Si\u00fan N\u00ed Raghallaigh, said she informed the Department of the process involved in the resignation of Richard Collins the day after he left the organisation.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre we to understand from this that the Department was, in fact, aware that there had been an exit package and that it had been approved by the Chair? If so, was the Minister informed and, if not, why not?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Minister, in my view, showed a lamentable lack of judgment in agreeing to proceed with a Prime Time interview last night in circumstances where serious issues had arisen about the Chair of the RT\u00c9 board. Instead of discussing those issues with the Chair of RT\u00c9 at the first available opportunity, she preferred to effectively fire her live on air on RT\u00c9\u2019s flagship current affairs programme.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe net result of this is that an already crisis-engulfed broadcaster has been thrown into further turmoil. Given the brutal treatment of Ms N\u00ed Raghallaigh by the Minister, and this escalating crisis, it is unlikely that successor candidates will be lining up to take on the job that is now vacant.<\/p>\n
\u201cRT\u00c9 cannot be left rudderless at a time when the organisation is in such turmoil. A large degree of that turmoil can be ascribed to the hands-off approach and chronic indecision of a Minister who has not kept on top of this ongoing crisis. The Minister has serious questions to answer about her handling of this debacle.\u201d<\/p>\n
February 23, 2024<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Media Minister Catherine Martin has serious questions to answer about her own handling of the crisis in RT\u00c9, according to Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns. \u201cThe Minister is claiming she was kept in the dark about exit packages agreed with senior RT\u00c9 executives last year. If this is the case, then it is clear the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4331,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[400,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-holly-cairns","category-press-release"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n