TE director basic Kevin Bakhurst stated that Ryan Tubridy remains to be being paid by the broadcaster and that negotiations on resolving that problem could be his “next step”.

Tubridy, who was the nationwide broadcaster’s highest earner, has been off air since June 22 after a scandal emerged that RTE had understated his earnings from the interval 2017 to 2022.

The stand-ins for his weekday morning radio programme have been satirist Oliver Callan and presenter Brendan Courtney.

Asked whether or not RTE would proceed to pay Tubridy, Mr Bakhurst stated: “We need to resolve that, that’s the next step now.”

He stated that the dispute over whether or not Tubridy was nonetheless in contract after stepping down from the flagship TV chat present The Late Late Show in May was nonetheless unresolved.

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He stated: “Well, I think, as has been said before, he had that contract, which covered both the Late Late and his radio work.

“When he decided to leave The Late Late Show, clearly there was some discussion about whether he’d left that contract or not, and I don’t think there’s agreement on that,” he instructed RTE’s Morning Ireland.

“We continued to pay him because I thought it was a fair thing to do over that period, because we would normally pay someone over the summer and it was our decision to take him off air for a while.

“But we didn’t pay him at the level that they were seeking for him to be paid.”

He stated that he didn't focus on with Tubridy on Thursday whether or not he would nonetheless return 150,000 euro paid to him by a UK-based barter account for his involvement in occasions that haven't but taken place.

“I don’t expect him to repay it. I made it clear to him throughout that I felt, morally, it was the right thing to repay it.

“He had agreed as part of returning to RTE that he would repay it,” he stated, including that that now might change.

Mr Bakhurst stated that discussions had begun inside RTE about who would change Tubridy, and stated that audiences had reacted “warmly” to the substitute presenters for his former Radio One present.

Standing in for Tubridy on Friday morning, Courtney stated it was “a little bit strange to be here” in entrance of the mic for the 9am programme, and stated that “we all feel a bit discombobulated this morning”.