Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 23 March 2021

Public Accounts Committee

Business of Committee

9:30 am

Photo of Imelda MunsterImelda Munster (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The committee previously expressed disappointment that the Eversheds Sutherland report was not published and that we only received it in summary format.

I understand that RTÉ will appear before the committee in the next couple of weeks. Could we write and ask it to publish that report in full in advance of appearing before us, and if it could do so now?

I also find it strange that RTÉ only published information about the normalisation of contracts in response to correspondence from the committee when in fact it had committed to resolving it by early 2019. Can we ask for clarity as to whether the majority of those workers had their situations normalised at this stage and if they were compensated for years previous to that?

I suggest we write to the National Union of Journalists, NUJ, to seek its input as to whether it believes the situation has been fully resolved and how it feels the resolution process played out. We are looking at bogus self-employment in the next couple of weeks. There seems to be a huge difference between how workers on one side of the spectrum are treated with regard to their social protection and how workers or big stars on the other side of the spectrum are treated within RTÉ. As the national broadcaster, that would illustrate to me quite starkly how ordinary workers in this State have been treated versus high earners.

Could we write to the NUJ to ask it about this issue? Can we also ask RTÉ to publish that report in full in advance of appearing before the committee?

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