Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

What has been reopened is on a very limited basis. The service has been closed for a substantial period in Listowel and in Cork. We will follow through on that.

No. 535 B from Ms Vivienne Flood, head of public affairs at RTÉ, dated 28 April 2021, provides information to the committee following the meeting on 27 April 2021. For members’ information, this is separate to the follow-up information arising from the meeting that has been requested by the secretariat and which will come before the committee in due course.

I should put on the record that Ms Flood wishes to clarify two matters raised at the meeting. On the first matter, Ms Flood said in her correspondence that:

In response to a question raised as to the number of individuals who had been offered employment by RTÉ, Ms Eimear Cusack incorrectly stated that three individuals did not accept contracts of employment and had left the organisation. By way of clarification, two of those individuals are no longer with the organisation. The third individual was designated an employee in that they continued to work for RTÉ with all relevant statutory entitlements being applied.

Ms Flood wished to clarify a second matter and said in her correspondence that:

Further to a question raised by Deputy Murphy as regards a recent settlement on a defamation claim, Ms Forbes stated that the cost of the payment in question had [come] through a claim on our own insurance. On this occasion that was not in fact the case since the amount was below the insurance reserve within our policy.

We will note and publish this item and I will open the floor to members for further consideration. We had raised the issue of the Eversheds report with the RTÉ representatives. The members will note that 36% of workers were misclassified as being self-employed, but actually had all of the conditions that would be deemed necessary for employment.

In answer to a question I asked the witnesses, it was said that RTÉ had made a settlement with Revenue with regard to outstanding PRSI contributions. This was due to the fact that 36% of those workers were wrongly classified as self-employed. Deputies Carthy, Munster and Catherine Murphy have flagged this issue.