Mr. S?amus Dooley:

If people do not know about it, it is simply because they have not been following it. At an earlier stage of this hearing I outlined that 20 years ago we were responsible for a review conducted by Goodbody which ended the process of bogus self-employment. It crept in again. We raised it, as did the trade union movement, through the social partnership, not just in the context of RTÉ. One of the issues we raised was the consistent failure of the Government to provide sufficient resources to the scope section to go out into media organisations and onto building sites. The scope section is grossly underfunded and we raised that.

The current issue was first raised by the trade unions in 2007 and 2008. We have been raising it consistently and on 31 January 2019 I raised it in this room. This is an issue we have been dealing with consistently. The Evershed Sutherland review arose as a direct result of the trade unions. The director general of RTÉ herself has admitted and said in evidence to this committee when she turned up that the first item on the agenda of the first meeting she attended with a trade union was bogus self-employment. The first item on the agenda of the first meeting the director of HR turned up at was bogus self-employment.