Ryan Tubridy and his agent Noel Kelly will spend more than six hours giving evidence to two Oireachtas Committees today.
Tubridy and Kelly will come before the Public Accounts Committee at 11 am on Tuesday and the Media Committee at 3 pm. They are expected to be joined by a solicitor.
TDs and senators will ask the pair to account for hidden payments made to the presenter which has sparked three weeks of controversy at RTÉ. The undeclared payments, amounting to €345,000 were paid between 2017 and 2022, were uncovered during an audit at the State broadcaster.
In documents given to members of the PAC, Ryan Tubridy runs through a number of what he describes as 'untruths' about the ongoing debate around the payments scandal at RTÉ.
He lists six of them. The first is a claim that he didn't take a pay cut from RTÉ during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
He said the second untruth is that his decision to retire from the Late Late Show was prompted by the whole debacle. He says it wasn't.
He said the third untruth was that he was secretly or covertly overpaid by RTÉ. He said there were no overpayments, just 'under-declarations' by RTÉ.
He said the fourth untruth was that he was aware that RTÉ was trying to conceal payments to him and there was a secret arrangement with Renault that he tried to conceal. He said that's not true, and says they were public appearances which were all over social media.
Ryan Tubridy also contests that the RTÉ underwriting of Renault's payment obligations of €75,000 a year was a secret.
It's claimed there's an email dated 20th of February 2020 from then Chief Financial Officer, Breda O'Keeffe, to his agent unequivocally confirming that RTÉ would underwrite the deal, something that completely contradicts previous testimony given by RTÉ officials to an Oireachtas Committee just last week.
Tuesday's committee hearings will be broadcast on Oireachtas TV as well as by Virgin Media.
A number of pubs around the country are also due to screen the hearings.
