Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

It was a remarkably similar agreement. There is a €5,000 difference despite the fact that we were in an awful situation with the country in lockdown. I will leave that there because people can make up their own minds on it.

Mr. Lynch talked about Ms Geraldine O'Leary being truthful. She could not remember who gave instructions or whose idea it was for all of this. We got a document on Tuesday. We were referred to page 25. A synopsis of page 25 is that it includes an email to RTÉ's then commercial director, Geraldine O'Leary, dated 29 April 2022. It passes on instructions on how invoices 2 and 3 are to be raised. Geraldine O'Leary's email instructed Noel Kelly on the company name, Astus, the address, and the VAT reference to be included on the invoice. It provides instructions not to put the person's name on it. For somebody who could not remember any of that, there is quite a lot of instruction, backed up by documentation that goes along with that. Mr. Lynch is telling us that Ms O'Leary was truthful.

The second thing I questioned Ms O'Leary on followed from somebody saying to me that she had been told a year before that there was an issue with this within RTÉ. She categorically refuted that that was the case. Then I read in The Sunday Timesthat there was evidence that this was raised with her in 2022.

The reality, going back to what Deputy Kelly said, is that we are going around in circles. If I have been told stuff, where there is clear evidence of it not being true, by Breda O'Keeffe and Geraldine O'Leary, I find it difficult to believe anything they say. They were asked to categorically state things. We have been given the runaround on this. I am putting that on the record. The committee has been misled and, by extension, the public has been misled.

I want to go on to something else. According to the documentation we have, RTÉ has 20 accounts. Five of those accounts are dormant accounts but they are all reconciled monthly. There is a central fund. I am raising this in the context of Toy Show The Musical. We were told the other day that the loss of €2.2 million was paid from the central fund but in a freedom of information document, we were told the musical was being funded through RTÉ Commercial Enterprises Limited, CEL, which is one of three companies that I can see RTÉ has, with another being RTÉ Transmission Network. Is it a separate legal entity? There are different directors.