Brendan Griffin (Kerry, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have to go back to the RTÉ question. It is not going away, unfortunately. The more people I engage with and talk to in this regard and the longer it goes on, the more disillusioned I get with the organisation. I want to ask this in particular in the context of the bogus self-employment scandal in RTÉ of which we have been aware now for some time. The fact that it arose at all in an arm of the State is deeply worrying and concerning.

I understand that RTÉ is in the process of settling up with Revenue and the Department of Social Protection in regard to various legacy PRSI debts and other debts to the workers who were classed as self-employed but should have been employees. By effectively retrospectively settling these debts, RTÉ has acknowledged that these people should have been employees.

Is the Minister aware that many of these workers have had zero compensation or zero settlement for the time they worked for RTÉ? When they should have been classed as employees, they were classed as self-employed. The organisation has settled with the State but it has not paid these people and has not provided them with pension entitlements, for example, or with benefits such as sick pay or maternity pay. This affects a huge number of workers at RTÉ. Is the Minister aware this is going on? Has she been given a figure for what it would cost RTÉ to fully rectify those figures retrospectively in respect of workers who were incorrectly and, some would say, illegally classed as self-employed when they should have been classed as employees? There are also all of the other things that went with that, such as the lack of rights, lack of benefits and poor treatment that these workers received and, in some cases, continue to receive from the organisation. Is the Minister also aware of the threat of the legal avenue being the only avenue these workers can pursue when they approach RTÉ management about these issues?