Sinéad Gibney grills RTE on KPMG CFO and outsourcing

I just want to start by saying in response to or building on what the Chair mentioned about additional information, I just wanted to say that the Minister did quote to the press that the information that Ortiz shared with him, which I asked for last week, should be shared with the committee tomorrow and that you will be doing that, so. Sorry, can I clarify that? Actually, it was a question I asked in the room, which is would you mind if we, if we're requested that we share this? So that has been provided? No, but I asked is it okay to share it? Well, okay, I don't want to waste any more of my time on this. Thank you, thank you, thank you. If we're asked what happened at the meeting, can we share this spreadsheet? I just wanted to get into a couple of specific issues, and the first one that I wanted to – Okay, sorry, I'll give you back your time, okay? So will you get somebody sitting behind you to send that to us now? Sure, sure, no problem. I'll give you back your time. No problem, thank you for that. I think that's a good idea. Thank you, and thank you all for being here today. I want to talk, and I think it's a real shame that we're back here talking about controversies and lists and top earners when there's so much we have to talk about around the public service mandate. I mean, I even was frustrated in the last conversation because it was so focused on redundancies and governance issues. However, I do have a governance issue that I want to start with before I get to the public service broadcasting, and that is around your CFOs, because is it the case that there has been five chief financial officers in RTE over the last six years? No. No? Five, so the one that was Richard Collins, yeah, Mike interim, but an interim one, so it was Richard Collins that was married earlier now. We've got a new one starting in the autumn. Okay, so only three. Okay, that was misinformation. We've had interim ones in a gap between CFOs leaving. Okay, so it's the one that you have at the moment that I really want to focus in on, because is it the case that you have a KPMG consulting CFO? Yeah. Why is there not, I mean, I remember actually in the last session when I asked you about succession planning, because the BBC job was up at the time, there was questions around your own role, and you said there was plenty of succession planning for DG. I'm curious why you have to outsource the role of CFO when surely there should be talent enough within the organisation to temporarily fulfil that role? Just to answer that, actually under the previous CFO, the finance team was restructured to actually create more capacity precisely to disclose and find items like this. And none of those people are able to step up as interim CFO while you replace somebody permanently. You have to outsource. Absolutely, because such as the, can I just say something? No, it's actually about the outsourcing that I want to get into, Mr Lynch, thank you, because I want to ask how were KPMG chosen then as the consulting firm that you wanted to outsource? They were on our framework. And do you think that there's any potential conflict given that the current chair of RTE was a partner with KPMG? No, he had no hand, act or part in it. It also would have come through procurement and they would have asked a number of agencies within the framework or whatever, and KPMG And is it cost effective? It is cost effective for the service that is provided. Also, if we were sitting here going, we have no interim CFO from a financial control point of view, I'm sure the committee would have an issue with that. Okay, I have an issue that this far on from the governance debacle that plagued the company or the organisation a few years ago, that you don't yet have enough competence and capacity in your finance department to install somebody in an interim role as CFO while you were appointing the role. I think that is problematic. And I also think that there are issues around both cost and governance that you are outsourcing to a firm which has a connection to the chair of your organisation. If you can just give me 60 seconds on it. No, I don't have 60 seconds because I have another issue that I want to get to. Okay, 30 seconds. No, thank you. I want to talk about outsourcing. I want to talk about outsourcing because I have raised this before, that I have huge concerns at the level of outsourcing which RTE is choosing to engage in because I believe there is institutional loss and I do not believe, I have yet to see a really comprehensive analysis of the cost of losing that institutional knowledge and outsourcing these programmes to elsewhere, to the commercial sector. And specifically I wanted to ask about Up for the Match because I want to understand where is the cost gain there and what are we losing? Have you quantified what we are losing in outsourcing that? Well, Up for the Match is, the team in television want to try and do Up for the Match in a different way and they want to do it out on location as opposed to in the studio, so they have gone out. Because when you were here last time, Mr Backhurst, you said to me that you were outsourcing pretty much everything except news, current affairs and sport. Is Up for the Match sport? Yeah, but it says one programme, that's all. So when you say news, current affairs and sport, you don't mean all of sport? Yeah, Up for the Match is a discussion programme, it's not sports coverage. It's not considered sports? Well, the sports team have been involved in it, yes, but we are looking at can we do things in a better way for audiences? I think, I would really encourage and I would really invite better analysis of what is being lost by all of this outsourcing. I believe the public service mandate is under threat and in the last 30 seconds I just have one other question because I sent you an email, Mr Backhurst, in February and I'm going to be, I've sent follow-up emails since then and I still have not received a reply. Many other committee members commended you for making the brave decision around not showing the Eurovision and I have requested multiple times now to ask, will you please refrain from broadcasting the RTE or the Israel-Ireland fixture because it is sports watching and I have not had a response, so I expect a response, if you'd like to provide one now, I would be very grateful. No, we won't because we have a contractual obligation to show it and it's up to the football authorities whether they play that game or not. And the other obligations that you had with Eurovision you were able to get out of? Yeah, that was our decision, the decision on the... But this is also your decision, this is your decision, contracts can be broken, contracts can be bought out, you can do this. And I would welcome a one-to-one discussion with you on that. Sure, I'd be happy to do that, yeah.