Eimear Cusack who was RTE’S HR director during the Tubridy crisis is to leave the TV station next spring, director general Kevin Bakhurst has confirmed.
Ms Cusack came under considerable scrutiny and appeared before multiple Oireachtas committees to discuss how RTÉ handled the payment scandal at the time.
She was strongly criticised during the hearings for signing off on a €450,000 exit package without board approval for former chief financial officer (CFO) Breda O’Keeffe, which did not comply with the redundancy scheme in place at the time.
She said at the time that 177 people left on the first voluntary exit scheme in 2017 and 26 left on the second scheme in 2021, ‘all of whom went through due process’. Asked if the role of CFO was ‘suppressed’, she said: ‘I was told that the cost savings will be achieved. As I said earlier, looking back today, I should have pushed back harder. ‘In that scheme, role suppression was not the only criteria, which is different from 2021, which was run differently.’
She added: ‘When I look back on it, I see it was a confidential agreement between the [then] director general [Dee Forbes] and the CFO. I had no notion of, and was not told about, the rationale for it.’ At the hearing, Sinn Féin TD Imelda Munster asked Ms Cusack if she was afraid of Ms Forbes. ‘Were you afraid of questioning her? Were you afraid of tackling this?,’ she asked. Ms Cusack said she ‘wasn’t afraid of Dee Forbes’, and that she took full responsibility for the oversight in signing off the letter.
Mr Bakhurst defended Ms Cusack at the time. He said: ‘Eimear made a mistake in this case and has said so. I have worked with many heads of HR in my time and Eimear is an extremely good one. She is delivering change and fairness across the organisation.’ Ms Cusack joined RTÉ as director of human resources in 2017, after an extensive career in the private sector, where she worked as head of HR for Ericsson across the UK and Ireland.
Writing to colleagues yesterday, Mr Bakhurst confirmed Ms Cusack would leave next year, saying: ‘ I would like to let you know Eimear has made the decision to leave RTÉ. Eimear will remain in the role until spring 2026 but wanted to provide sufficient notice to allow RTÉ to recruit her successor and allow for some overlap.
'I would like to take this opportunity to thank Eimear for her commitment to RTÉ since she joined in 2017 and for her invaluable support to me since I took up the role of director general in July 2023. ‘Eimear has played an important role as part of RTÉ’s leadership team in the ongoing transformation of the organisation and in driving a wide range of important HR projects and initiatives. Eimear will remain on RTÉ’s leadership team and will continue to oversee key HR projects until she leaves next year.’
He added: ‘For clarity, Eimear is not leaving as part of the voluntary exit programme. ‘As previously confirmed, members of the leadership team were not eligible to apply.’ Asked if Ms Cusack would receive a lump sum from RTÉ, a spokesman said: ‘As stated by RTÉ director general Kevin Bakhurst in his note to staff this afternoon, Eimear Cusack has made the decision to leave RTÉ. She is not leaving RTÉ as part of the voluntary exit programme nor is she receiving any lumpsum payment from RTÉ.’
