Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank our witnesses. We are here to discuss transparency of RTÉ's expenditure, governance issues and the future funding challenges facing RTÉ. I will focus my attention on the latter. We heard much talk today about how RTÉ has failed to advertise the TV licence and how we look forward to the day when we can talk about the future funding of RTÉ. That day is today. This has been dragging on since June. People's confidence in RTÉ has been rocked but we cannot reform RTÉ without the Government doing its job. In my view we need decisive action by the Government which includes sorting out the licence fee. That is the elephant in the room. It is a complete mess. It needs to be scrapped. It is a broken system. The Government still refuses to deal with it.

If I was cynical, I would say that the Government likes to talk about RTÉ in crisis and does not want to sort out the problems in RTÉ because every time we talk about RTÉ, we talk less about the housing crisis and the problems in healthcare. Government TDs rush out to do pieces on camera every time a bit of news about RTÉ breaks.