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

If it is agreed by the members, we can forward it to the sports committee. No. 741B, dated 12 July 2021, is from Ms Vivienne Flood, head of public affairs, RTÉ, and provides information requested by the committee on a range of issues. No. 754B, dated 30 July 2021, is also from RTÉ. I propose we take the two together.

Part of the information requested by the committee on a number of occasions was the amount paid by RTÉ to the Revenue Commissioners in respect of a Revenue audit inquiry into the engagement of contractors by RTÉ. RTÉ states that, as the process has now concluded, it can disclose the amount paid to Revenue was €1.223 million. Members will recall that, at a meeting earlier in the year, we extracted the fact it made a settlement. We had also requested information on the parallel audit being conducted by the Department of Social Protection. RTÉ states it is ongoing but no interim payment has been made to the Department. As with the Revenue process, RTÉ states it is unable to provide more detail until the audit has concluded. That is obviously relating to the employer's liabilities in respect of each employee.

On the committee's request that RTÉ conduct a comparative review of the remuneration of Irish-speaking workers at Raidió na Gaeltachta and their counterparts in RTÉ, first made at our meeting with RTÉ last April, RTÉ states it has appointed a company with specific experience in the media sector to carry out a full evaluation of all staff roles and grades in RTÉ. Irish language roles will be part of this review, which was set to commence this month. This review follows on from the recommendations contained within the role and gender review report conducted by Mr. Kieran Mulvey on behalf of RTÉ in 2017. One of the key recommendations in Mr. Mulvey's report was to review and simplify its current structure, which has 167 different grades. RTÉ states it is following through on this recommendation and, while it cannot undertake to conduct also a review specific to any one service, it will be addressed as part of the wider review.

I propose we note and publish this correspondence and ask RTÉ to provide us with the findings of the social protection audit as well as the findings of the organisational review as soon as they become available. Is that agreed? Agreed.

I also propose that we engage with RTÉ and the Department on the funding it receives in early July. We can consider that work under the review programme and bring in the representatives again on that matter. Is that agreed? Agreed.

There was correspondence from Ms Vivienne Flood that officially outlined for the first time that RTÉ made a settlement with Revenue regarding people who were wrongly classified as self-employed, or what is referred to as bogus self-employment. That has been an important step forward for the Committee of Public Accounts but we need to know much more about the payments. What were they for? How many staff members does that payment take account of? What about other staff? Does the payment cover only what the State was owed or does it cover compensation to those 11 workers? We need to know more about the audit that is being carried out by the Department of Social Protection and the number of workers involved in that. We need to know more about what RTÉ is doing about these contracts and workplace practices around the classification of employment and what is sometimes referred to as bogus self-employment. We have got the figure of the settlement between RTÉ and Revenue. As soon as the figures relevant to the Department of Social Protection and the PRSI contributions that are due in that regard are available, we should look for that information. I request that we correspond with RTÉ and thank it for the information that has been provided. We should also highlight there are other specific pieces of information we want. We should bring representatives of the company in for an engagement later in the year. Deputy Murphy wants to comment on the matter.