Peter Fitzpatrick (Louth, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I apologise. I had to go to the Chamber earlier on, so if I ask a question that has already been asked, I apologise. First of all, I guarantee that nobody in this room has never made a mistake. If people made a mistake, they should put their hands up in the air and admit it. I have never seen that in the past week. It is a word called hatred. Many people are badmouthing RTÉ. In fairness, they deserve it. The bottom line is that the witnesses were responsible for giving Ryan Tubridy €345,000 over the last five years. Let us call a spade a spade. Dee Forbes is being thrown under a bus here. I have my own business. She had to have some kind of allies and people she could sit down and talk to. Did the witnesses have any daily, weekly or monthly meetings? They talked about doing audits. There were findings back in March 2022. How many audits was RTÉ doing each week or month? If there are 1,800 people working for RTÉ, it needs to be on top of it.

We have seven people in the room with seven big titles and responsibilities and, all of a sudden, only one person knows it all. I cannot understand that and just cannot accept it. I want to ask a few questions. Who uses this barter account? Is it used for going to parties? Have any of the seven witnesses ever used that account for themselves? These questions have to be asked. We need to get trust back in RTÉ. It is the biggest media company in the country.

I will be honest that I have two grandchildren, aged seven and ten, and all they are talking about is Ryan Tubridy, for the wrong reasons. He is no saint in this at the moment. Are the witnesses trying to tell me that Dee Forbes ran everything, including all 1,800 people? I managed 60 or 70 people at one stage and if I had not got a good team behind me, I was in serious trouble. This is an opportunity for the witnesses to put their hands in the air. I am not going to say they are telling lies, but someone is telling lies. Something is seriously wrong here at the moment. There are a few questions.