Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Well, if they are final, final, I have one big one to ask at the end. Our national media are great. Some of them are here and we rely on all of them for accuracy. Last December, they reported that RTÉ was set to pay €1.74 million to its employees vis-à-visgift vouchers. That was an admirable measure - and I congratulate RTÉ - to mitigate the huge cost-of-living pressures its workers and their families were facing. A lot of companies did something similar. However, it does beg a question now, given that we have discovered only in the past week that RTÉ has this account that can reward top talent. Some of those vouchers were worth €1,000. They were pretty large vouchers. Was that a catch-all pick-up to all of RTÉ's employees and contractors or did it look at those who were lowest paid? I would like to think, as someone who pays his licence and someone who represents the public, that this public purse money was spent at the right level. Were some of RTÉ's top stars getting that? Was it a backhand way of getting top-up payments to certain people?