Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I do not like the expression "the talent". Who are "the talent" when this term is being used? One of the backdrops to this is there are people, including crew members, camera people, people who make stages, administration people and journalists who are on a fraction of the wages of the top people, who, if I understand the use of this term correctly, are somehow defined as "not the talent". There is the vast majority of the 1,800 workers who benefited in no way, who were deceived and who are apparently "not talent" and then there are people who deserved to get eight, nine and ten times what the others get. Do the witnesses agree that there is a problem with those sorts of formulations of "the talent" and that there is a problem with these independent contractors, full stop? You have staff who are paid in a transparent way and then you have these independent contractors, who are supposedly "the talent", negotiating deals for multiples of what everybody else is earning. Is that level of inequality in the payment of people who in reality work for RTÉ acceptable? Does it not have to end? Is it not, in and of itself, corrosive of the cohesion and integrity of RTÉ?