Ex-RTE star Pat Kenny has defended under-fire figures Ryan Tubridy and his agent Noel Kelly.
The pair, who are due before Oireachtas committees this week, have been at the centre of a payment scandal at the national broadcaster since details emerged on June 22 of €345,000 payments to Tubridy.
Pat, 75, who is also represented by Noel Kelly, 60, praised him for “exemplary service” as an agent and said “hard work, diligence, honesty” are hallmarks of Ryan Tubridy, 50.
He said: “Ryan Tubridy started his career as a cub reporter on my radio show [at RTE] and hard work, diligence, honesty - all of those things were his hallmark. I just want to lay that on the line.”
Of his agent, he said: “Noel Kelly is my agent. [He] wasn't at the time I was in RTE but only in Newstalk and got exemplary service from Noel.
"No complaints. Him and his team were fantastic. I have to say that.”
Pat hosted RTE’s flagship The Late Late Show from 1999 to 2009 and quit the station in 2013 after 40 years to join Newstalk. He has been away from his radio show as the RTE payment scandal unfolded and said yesterday on his return: “I missed all this.
“Well, I didn't really, I was following it online. I was away on holiday. I apologised earlier and I'll do it again to all my journalistic colleagues [because] I didn't take their calls.
"I thought when they heard the foreign ringtone, they'd leave me alone, but they didn't. Talk to one? Talk to everybody? I talked to nobody.”
He added: “I was watching this from afar, so I wasn't caught up in the Liveline calls and the calls to Lunchtime Live here of what people were saying.
"There was a word that kept cropping up in my mind and that word was schadenfreude.
"It's a German word but what it actually means is the experience of pleasure, joy or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures or humiliation of another.
"And I thought there was schadenfreude in spades going on.
"Mostly from the political side, people who have lost probably €1.5 billion building a children's hospital giving out about the price of flip flops.
"It's hard to take. The journalistic staff in RTE have done a great job."
Pat also spoke of his time on the RTE board and stated: “I was on the board of RTE. I wasn't put there by the staff, I was put there by the minister of the day.
“And I know the way it used to work and basically the DG [director general] and the chair kind of sort out the agenda for the board.
“Documents are circulated and the board makes very few kind of day-to-day decisions.”
