Is the RTE payments scandal symptomatic of a lack of Ethics in Irish business?

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CuriousCork

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Everyone is saying that the payments were lawful. Yes, they were lawful, as they were made under legally binding contracts. However, they were not Ethical.

Unforunately, there is a lack of ethics across Irish business. The Tracker Redress scandal is probably one of the greatest manifestations of a lack of ethics. If any bank had asked themselves "Is it ethically right to charge extra interest to customers" they could have prevented the scandal and saved the banks billions.
 
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CuriousCork said:
Irish Society is worse. Unforunately, we have been raised on a culture of "cute hoorism" and "getting away with it" etc
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And yet we are one off the least corrupt countries in the world, ranked 10th in the world as least corrupt by Transparency International. I think the Tribunals into political corruption fundamentally changed Irish society for the better. While we have high marginal tax rates which encourages evasion and a very generous welfare system which it structures to encourage dishonesty we still have high levels of compliance by international standards.
RTE have a sense of self importance and a belief that the people who work there, by the mere nature of their employment, have a higher sense of ethics and are morally superior to the general population. In that they are similar to the BBC, the Boy Scouts and the Catholic Church, and many in the medical and legal industries. That's dangerous.
 
The RTE scandal has specific aspects to it that I would consider unethical.

But across the board what seems to be shared is a cavalier attitude when it comes to getting value for money in their spending of public funds.

And maybe not 'corruption' as it is understood in the Transparency index, but feather bedding etc, that the job is there to serve them not the public.
 
odyssey06 said:
And maybe not 'corruption' as it is understood in the Transparency index, but feather bedding etc, that the job is there to serve them not the public.
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In that they were similar to most State funded bodies in most countries.

It is generally true that people put less value on other people's money than they do on their own.

It is also generally true that ethical standards are not determined by the jobs people choose to do or the qualifications people have. Organisations or groups which delude themselves into thinking that they (their members) are in fact intrinsically more honest or ethical and structure themselves accordingly leave themselves more open to internal abuse going undetected.

Considering the scandals in the BBC over the last few decades this one in RTE is small beer.
 
ArthurMcB said:
Why?

The payment were legal but not transparent. The payments were earned by the recipient, per the agreed contract. Its a lot of money but good luck to him. What was unethical about the payment?
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They were guaranteed by RTE as per the contract, but it's unclear in several of the years if any extra services were provided i.e. the years where RTE guaranteed the payment as no commercial partner signed up. So I would disagree they were 'earned'.

As part of the arrangements to pay the €150,000 - an additional 80000 was paid in 'fees' (as per Irish Examiner) to a third party Astus.
It is unclear what was done to warrant these payments, whether procurement rules were followed in this complex barter operation.

It was unethical of RTE to conceal these payments from the RTE presenters pay figure they are required to disclose.

It unethical of RTE and RT to talk of taking solidarity pay cuts to RTE employees, and to give figures and percentages that were not accurate.

And then there will be questions \ investigations from PAC about whether reporting and procurement procedures were followed correctly. That certainly could reveal improper practices and unethical practices.

“€150,000 was paid to Mr. Tubridy’s agent (on his behalf) from the barter account in 2022. This related to the guaranteed income for 2021 and 2022. It resulted in an overall cost to RTÉ, from this account, of €230,760 (inclusive of fees incurred through the barter account process),” RTÉ’s initial statement said.
Suspicions were raised when Astus sent RTE a statement that referred to one of the payments marked “consultancy services” in May 2022.
“No one seemed to be able to explain what services Astus was paying for or who had authorised the payments,” it continued.

www.thejournal.ie

What are the key questions RTÉ still has to answer as it's hauled before TDs?

Representatives of the board and executive will appear before the Public Accounts Committee and the Oireachtas Media Committee this week.
www.thejournal.ie www.thejournal.ie
 
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I think a big part of this is a belief that Tubridy was/is overpaid. He's getting around the same money as a GP and he's the top broadcaster in the country. I think he's significantly underpaid.
 
I don't think Irish business is unethical, if anything and for the most part it's the opposite. No one has ever approached me for a bribe to win a deal or offered me one either. However we are a small country and as such, that generates a lot more conflicts of interest then perhaps other countries and that can be an issue.

The returning theme in the recent scandals has been more around lawyers not being half as clever as they thought they were. I've no doubt lawyers signed off on the tracker mortgage approach for the banks as an example. Lawyers would also have gone over the Tubridy agreement. Yet they've both come back to bite.

There is also an issue where a lot of board members of an organisation don't understand their roles and responsibilities and sometimes have an attitude that if I don't ask, I won't know and therefore I cant be blamed.
 
thedaddyman said:
I don't think Irish business is unethical, if anything and for the most part it's the opposite. No one has ever approached me for a bribe to win a deal or offered me one either. However we are a small country and as such, that generates a lot more conflicts of interest then perhaps other countries and that can be an issue.
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In the last 20 years in business I've only been asked for a bribe once and that was the one time I was dealing with a semi-state organisation. In Multinational businesses you can't even give someone a bottle of wine at Christmas anymore.
 
One man's ethics is another man's smart play.

Look at the 4 million posts on this site about claiming a UK pension. I don't recall seeing a single post where someone struggled with their conscience on this - as in whether it was morally right to be claiming this windfall from the British people?
 
Purple said:
In the last 20 years in business I've only been asked for a bribe once and that was the one time I was dealing with a semi-state organisation. In Multinational businesses you can't even give someone a bottle of wine at Christmas anymore.
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True, we do get some bottles etc at Christmas and raffle them off to to the team but we have a pretty black and white policies on these things.
 
JimmyB99 said:
One man's ethics is another man's smart play.

Look at the 4 million posts on this site about claiming a UK pension. I don't recall seeing a single post where someone struggled with their conscience on this - as in whether it was morally right to be claiming this windfall from the British people?
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I'm one, lived there for many years, paid my direct and indirect taxes there for many years and I have no issue claiming something I am legally entitled to claim. It is open and transparent as to what is going on, which is perhaps one of the issues with the RTE payments
 
Thedaddyman,

There's folk that were there a year or two claiming this as you know well.

When people play the social welfare system here, questions are asked. Why is it ok to play the social welfare system in another country?

I am not - as was made clear - talking about "legal entitlement". I think it's an ethical question - there's people who don't need this money who will claim it. I'm not sure it's morally right.
 
JimmyB99 said:
Thedaddyman,

There's folk that were there a year or two claiming this as you know well.

When people play the social welfare system here, questions are asked. Why is it ok to play the social welfare system in another country?

I am not - as was made clear - talking about "legal entitlement". I think it's an ethical question - there's people who don't need this money who will claim it. I'm not sure it's morally right.
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800 years!!!

You are of course entirely correct. There are well paid people not paying their full taxes who give out about welfare abuse and people abusing welfare who give out about tax evasion.

Integrity is what you do when nobody's looking.
 
The public sector has rules and regulations about pretty much everything when it comes to spending money but there have always been those who seek to bend the rules to breaking point to suit their own purposes.

On one level they think they’re being clever but it’s really low level corruption, however you like to dress it up.
 
ArthurMcB said:
I dont think the payments were unethical. I think rte's treatment of them was unethical.
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On RTE Prime Time I am trying to repeat what was said ... it goes beyond that. Invoice for 75000 payment was billed under 'consultancy services.

This does not reflect the substance of what the payment was for.

This is participation in a ploy to conceal the nature of the payments.

One of the commentators called it 'false accounting'.

This is certainluly 'un' something and goes beyond RTE
 
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JimmyB99 said:
Look at the 4 million posts on this site about claiming a UK pension. I don't recall seeing a single post where someone struggled with their conscience on this - as in whether it was morally right to be claiming this windfall from the British people?
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I receive a UK state pension and a private employment pension from my time there as a productive worker. I was invited to work there having applied for a job interview in response to an ad placed in an Irish newspaper by my subsequent employers, a massive British concern.

Please be specific, what crime am I commiting or is it just that I'm taking the King's shilling (it was his Mammy's before that)?
 
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