RTE in Crisis

Ex-media department chief will not join Catherine Martin at RTÉ hearing

Katherine Licken is at the centre of conflicting accounts given by Catherine Martin and RTÉ regarding exit payments for senior executives

Catherine Martin: the media minister is to face a grilling over the what her department knew regarding the RTÉ board approval’s of exit packages for former senior staffers. Picture: Norma Burke

Katherine Licken, the former secretary general at the Department of Media, will not attend an Oireachtas committee hearing into the ongoing RTÉ crisis this evening.

The civil servant, who ran media minister Catherine Martin’s department up until January of this year, is at the centre of conflicting accounts between RTÉ and Martin over when the department was informed about the RTÉ board’s role in signing off on new exit packages for executives.

Martin is due ...