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

I thank the committee for allowing me to come in on the discussion. I thank the ARC and all our contributors. I have some questions that may be a bit more detailed, but I have a couple of initial general questions and observations. First, the victims of this mess, and it is a mess, are the TV licence-paying public, who can go to jail if they do not pay their TV licence, and the vast majority of the RTÉ staff, who do not enjoy staggering salaries and who have often had to endure pay cuts, pay freezes, lack of resources and so on. On that second group, given that there has been an acknowledgement by the witnesses that this is a mess, that some big mistakes have been made here, and that something has to be done to reform RTÉ to protect public service broadcasting, have the representatives engaged with the elected representatives of the staff since all of this blew up to get their opinions and thoughts on what has happened? My understanding is that has not really happened on any sort of formal level. They are out protesting. They are very worried and they are very angry. As a matter of urgency, the executive and the board need to listen to the workers and the staff in there, who are victims of this, regarding what is happening to them and to listen to their ideas about what needs to change in RTÉ.