Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will just make a comment because I know the Chair is under pressure. I will go back to what I said last week and I do not expect any of the panel to answer this. The Minister with responsibility for communications in 2002 recently wrote an article in the Irish Daily Mail- I am going to differ with Moya a little on this - about 20 years ago. In that article - the witnesses can look it up - he said that on the first day of that job, he and the then Taoiseach met with the then director general and I think head of television, who was Cathal Goan, and he said that the running of the organisation at that time was shambolic. He also referred to the fact that there were 11 employees on the payroll who were no longer in RTÉ. We have to back as far as 2002 because perhaps you are getting some of the blame for bad old practices that have been there for years. At that time, something that was very unpopular with the general public was the big increase in the licence fee, which RTÉ got. However, things have not changed. This is my point; 21 years on things have not changed.

I want to see RTÉ survive. I spent 20 years in production and presentation. I love media and I love radio in particular. I think RTÉ does a lot of good work. It has some fantastic presenters who do a lot of good work and that is acknowledged. We do not want this to fall.

I will say one final thing that might not be the most popular thing to say to people - pay your TV licence. I do not want a situation where €200 million of revenue goes out the door and, because of that, some of the employees, particularly on the lower scale, find out that they have no jobs.