Following the money behind the mic

Like many in Ireland, I'm interested in the numbers and explanations in the annual financial report to be published in the RTE 2022 Annual Report. I teach several analytics modules at university level and know that if you track real numbers, you can discover hidden connections that reveal trends, motivations, and behavior.

A series of revelations during Oireachtas committee meetings during the last week of June 2023 suggest RTE's financials are being examined by the New Economic and Recovery Authority. This recession-era body understands the forensics behind financial reporting. It provides commercial advice to government departments in Ireland.

The public frenzy surrounding the misstatements concerning payments to the top Irish national broadcaster suggest methods of accounting that were designed to deceive readers. It appears only one person in RTE actually knew about the accounting irregularity. However, a larger cohort of senior staff at RTE appears to know about a slush fund that remained out of view by the head of finance.

Payments from the slush fund account include €138,000 spent for rugby tickets, €110,000 on travel and hotels for the Rugby World Cup in Japan in 2019 and €26,000 for Champions League final tickets in that same year.

During the same time period, some diligent RTE researchers and producers had to use their ironing boards at home at part of their home studios.

I've paid for registered audited accounts when filing company documents with Irish Revenue. This is a rigorous, time-consuming, and expensive process. If RTE's accounts followed the same process, I doubt there would have been line items for anonymized barter accounts or slush funds. It should be relatively straightforward for Media Minister Catherine Martin to close the accounting loopholes RTE has used to erode the trust of license fee payers.