Ryan Tubridy has expressed a desire to get back on the radio as soon as possible, but conceded it is “touch and go” whether he keeps his job.
The former Late Late Show host has been off air from his weekday morning radio programme on RTE Radio One since the revelations around misreported payments broke last month.
Appearing before two parliamentary committees on Tuesday, he spoke of the uncertainty around his future.
“I could be out of a job on Friday or I could be back on the radio on Monday,” he said.
His comments came as new RTE director general Kevin Bakhurst acknowledged he felt sorry for Tubridy.
Mr Bakhurst said a decision on Tubridy’s future at the national broadcaster will be made within “a few weeks”, and insisted he would not be out of a job by the weekend.
“I actually feel sorry for Ryan, that he has been put in this position – to be brutally honest,” he told Newstalk.
Asked if RTE had a duty of care to Tubridy, the director-general said it did.
“I think we do have a duty of care to him,” he said.
“I have not spoken to him, I’m not aware of anyone else that has spoken to him from RTE, I haven’t been asking.”
He added: “I will do, at the right time.”
Mr Bakhurst said he would like to speak to the star presenter “quite soon”.
He said colleagues were looking through the points made by Tubridy and that RTE would respond to them at the Public Accounts Committee on Thursday.
Asked about Tubridy’s characterisation of the scandal as a “mess entirely of RTE’s making”, Mr Bakhurst said he agreed the broadcaster needed to bear a lot of the responsibility but added that Tubridy’s agent Noel Kelly was also involved in the negotiations.
“Some people in RTE behaved shamefully and it has caused untold damage in the short-to-medium term to RTE,” he said.
“Whether RTE was fully to blame, I’m not sure I fully accept that. There was more than one party to this agreement.”
Answering questions of TDs and senators on Tuesday, Tubridy made clear he wanted to return to the airwaves.
“I don’t have any doubt, I want to go back to work on the radio as soon as possible,” he said.
“I don’t say that with any arrogance. I just say it as an expressed desire: it’s what I do, it’s what I know, and I want to get back to my team and to the listeners and with my job because it’s all I’ve got.”
On Monday, Mr Bakhurst had urged Tubridy to be fully transparent when he faced the parliamentary committees.
Asked at the Public Accounts Committee how he could rebuild trust, Tubridy replied: “A lot of the trust was taken from me.”
In terms of restoring trust in RTE, Tubridy said the organisation was off to a “good start” with the appointment of Mr Bakhurst.
He added: “I think that hopefully people will see what I’ve said today and will hear what I’m saying today and they’ll realise that a lot of what’s happened over the last few weeks, I’ve been dragged into a mess not of my own making.”
Tubridy offered to publish the terms of his contract on an annual basis going forward as part of the “cathartic” process going on within RTE.
“In the event that I do keep my job, and it’s touch and go from my understanding of it at the moment, I’d be happy to suggest that in the future we’d have a situation where you would publish my contract on an annual basis, with a few obvious redactions for personnel or what have you, with the money and the salary and the earnings there straight up,” he said.
“If RTE are going through a cathartic week, let this be part of it. I will offer that.
“I have nothing to hide. Put the contract out, put it online, tell everyone how much, don’t wait for three years then have this codology that can happen all this time later.”
