Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Right from the outset I felt that the worst possible thing that could happen in the RTÉ scandal is that a small number of ridiculously paid executives, a small number of ridiculously paid presenters and the lack of governance around those things were going to lead to ordinary workers losing out who had no responsibility for the misgovernance and, frankly, the greed of a small number at the top. I am interested to hear from the witnesses on this. My concern is that the worst-case scenario is unfolding.

Of course, it was the people at the top who decided to misclassify workers. I think it was the bosses in RTÉ who misclassified workers, because that is who does it. They do it in the private sector and the public sector. I have been campaigning against bogus self-employment for many years. There has been some criticism of the unions here. To be honest, I think the unions, at times, should be fighting harder against bogus self-employment. However, the people who misclassify are the bosses. The people who fund RTÉ – the Government – should make sure that the bosses they fund do not break the law and do not misclassify workers. I would like to hear from the witnesses about where they think they have failed in that regard. It is outrageous that in a publicly-funded body, the Government has failed to see what is absolutely obvious. There is an objective test – it is the control test. Are you an employee or are you a contractor? It is obvious in the vast majority of cases that these people had all the attributes of employees, they should have been classified as employees, it was breaking the law not to classify them as employees and it was designed in order to not give them their rights, entitlements and all the rest of it, which they now should have. It is absolutely right that they are enraged they were denied them, and they should get them. I hope the witnesses agree. The question of them getting their retrospective entitlements should not then be used as an excuse to threaten the future existence of RTÉ.

Tell me if I am right or wrong. The way I look at it, if jobs are suppressed in RTÉ, they will then be outsourced to a sector where there is no chance of getting a contract of indefinite duration – none at all. I am going to the WRC this Friday with workers in the film sector who have been blacklisted out of the sector because they asked for contracts of indefinite duration, even though they have worked in that sector for 20 and 30 years. The one thing that is obvious to me is that it might be bad in RTÉ, where people are misclassified, but if you go out to the so-called independent sector, you do no not have any chance of ever having a job, which is far worse. I think that is what needs to be emphasised, and something needs to be done. I am interested in the witnesses’ comments about what is happening in that sector. From what I understand, in respect of the sort of worker whose jobs may now be suppressed in RTÉ, none of their equivalents working in the independent TV sector or the audiovisual sector has a contract of indefinite duration even though they have worked for that industry for decades – nobody – which is absolutely shocking.