It may not have been particularly diplomatic of RTÉ director general Kevin Bakhurst to say this week that the organisation had paid a price for transparency. But his frustration was understandable. The emergence of fresh controversies about payments at the broadcaster has roused memories of the crisis three years ago. But none of what has been revealed so far approaches the gravity of those events. Legitimate questions do remain, however.Much of Bakhurst’s time in the job has been spent addressing governance failures which predated his arrival. Any action which corrects those failings should be welcomed, not punished.Whether Derek Mooney should have been classified as a producer or presenter is not the most pressing of these concerns. But the decision to remove Mooney from the top earners list, and its correction now, however justified, has reopened wounds that had barely healed. An Oireachtas committee hearing on Wednesday, as it typical of those occasions, generated more noise than illumination, though it did establish that ambiguities persist around the notional payment cap put in place by Bakhurst on his arrival.The case of Seán Rocks is more troubling. That a broadcaster of his calibre, who presented RTÉ’s flagship arts programme for 16 years, was classified throughout as a producer, with direct consequences for his family since his untimely death, demands a clearer explanation than has yet been forthcoming. Viewed alongside RTÉ’s well-documented history of bogus self-employment, it suggests a long-running corporate failure.The current management appears genuinely committed to reform. But transparency can be a thankless task, as Bakhurst and his team discovered this week. Ultimately it requires that the structures underpinning how people are treated reflect the values a public broadcaster should set for itself. These should be clear and comprehensible to the public which provides the bulk of RTÉ’s income. On that measure, there is still work to be done.