Mr. Kevin Bakhurst:

All I can say to the Deputy is that it is the law currently to pay the TV licence fee. I would say to those people that I hate seeing people prosecuted for not paying their licence fee. I would rather give them the absolute reason to pay their licence fee, which is to demonstrate this is a really well-run organisation providing valued content to them. We have 1,800 fantastic people who work in the organisation day in and day out delivering to those audiences. I would much rather demonstrate that. I would much rather there was a funding system that is, ideally, progressive and fair and enables us to deliver for audiences. I am not attempting to justify, nor was I there when Breda O'Keeffe got her pay off. The anger at that is shared by almost everyone I know in RTÉ and at every level from senior to the most junior level. I agree with them that it is not appropriate. It was not appropriate then and it would not happen now. My job is to try to clean up the organisation and make sure it is run in a more transparent and more accountable way, delivers for audiences and does not get into that situation again.