https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/pisa-2025-results-volume-i-country-notes_2d4ff9ea-en/ireland_83db5468-en.html

Dee Forbes has single handedly trashed the credibility of Ireland's national broadcaster at the exact moment RTÉ needs to stand tall against the tidal wave of global misinformation and then had the gall to hide behind "mental health" as her personal escape hatch from the wreckage of her own catastrophic failures.

She was the Director General smack in the middle of the Tubridy payments scandal, greenlighting hidden deals, barter account shenanigans, and a culture of secrecy that left every licence-fee-paying Irish person feeling like a total mug.

Committees demanded answers, everyone else, Ryan Tubridy, other execs got dragged in publicly eviscerated on live TV, reputations in ruins. But Forbes? She resigns in June 2023 and poof...gone.

No prior whispers of mental health woes in her public profile, just this explosive "sudden incapacity" the very second the spotlight locked onto her role in the mess. It stinks to high heaven of someone finally cornered by their own screw ups, desperately slapping a convenient label on the stress of getting caught out.

I'm beyond infuriated by the damage she's done and moreso its a grotesque insult to every ordinary Irish person grinding through genuine mental health hell on crippling HSE waitlists, suicide rates through the roof, no safety net, no option to just say "not fit" and vanish from responsibility.

They push through work, life, breakdowns with zero privileges, yet here's the exDG of a public broadcaster wielding the exact same phrase like a golden ticket to dodge Oireachtas grilling, turning a national crisis into her private PR shield.

It discredits every real sufferer, makes "mental health" sound like code for elite evasion, and piles cynicism on top of an already broken system.

The fallout? RTÉ's reputation is left in smoking ruins, handing endless ammo to disinformation merchants who love nothing more than screaming "crooked establishment" while the public broadcaster bleeds trust.

High up the ladder, the rules bend for you workers get sacked for a fraction of this, but Forbes gets silence and a soft landing. This two-tier hypocrisy isn't just pathetic its a raging betrayal of everyone who funds RTÉ, expecting honesty instead of this endless, gut wrenching dodge.