Imelda Munster (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

For the public, when you sit back and look at how the executive board entered into a separate commercial deal to underwrite payments to its top-paid presenter, it is hard to credit that the Renault deal ran for one year with RTÉ covering that €75,000 for Renault - it would not have to worry because it would all look good on paper - and the other two €75,000 payments for the other two years. The executive board went to all that bother to top up payments for its highest-paid presenter. We have been going back and forward for three weeks but will someone at some stage - we may have to wait for the forensic accountant or one of the reviews - just put their hands up and say that members of the executive board took it upon themselves to arrange to underwrite a deal so that its top-paid presenter would be subsidised for a pay cut with a top-up, that the deal was to be run through the barter account and that the public purse was going to pay? At this stage, people would have far more respect for RTÉ if it was to put its hands up because this makes no logical sense. We can go over the Renault deal and the whole lot but nothing makes sense other than that members of the RTÉ executive board took it upon themselves to make a deal with the top presenter's agent to sort out the cut in salary and to make it up by orchestrating this arrangement to be paid out of the public purse and stashed through the barter account. If someone said that, that could at least be respected.