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

I am firmly of the view, and the witnesses are alluding to it, that where commercial and advertising are concerned, there is a tension between them and the public service mandate. I will go further than the witnesses may be willing to - if they want to comment on it, please do - and say that it is a malign influence that seriously threatens to undermine the integrity of public service broadcasting, and this mess is evidence of that.

We need to look at the funding model. If there is not a proper funding model, RTÉ gets forced into doing this. The Government has to be held to account for forcing the institution into relying on commercial and advertising, which inevitably bring RTÉ into murky waters where it has to wine and dine corporate executives to get advertising and revenue. That opens up the possibility of the sorts of thing that are now infuriating people, namely, accounts paying for trips, flip-flops, parties or whatever. Would the witnesses like to comment on this?

I acknowledge that we need to face up to this issue but it does not fully explain the specifics of why we are here, or does it? I put it to Mr. Lynch or Ms Ní Raghallaigh last week that this looked like organised deceit and they acknowledged that it was. If it was, then someone organised it. It is still not clear who exactly organised that. Does Mr.Lynch agree that the staff, the public and the Oireachtas need to know who organised this deceit? Does he still stand over the idea that what we are dealing with and what is at the heart of this situation is organised deceit?