Mr. Peter Finnegan:

The commission considered the tender at its last meeting before the summer recess. The members also had a lot of the information that the workers had provided to them as well as some of the costings that we circulated. The situation that we are faced with is that the broadcasting contract expires on 31 December. We have to have certainty in terms of the provision of broadcasting in 2025, so we have to go to tender for certainty, because otherwise for the people who watch the proceedings here and RTÉ that shows the proceedings, there is the possibility that there would be no broadcast footage if we do not have a tender in place. From an accounting point of view, Mr. McCarthy mentioned the procurement issues that are in the account this year. We would also be immediately in that space because we would be non-compliant with procurement. For all of those reasons, the commission took the decision that the broadcast tender should be issued.

Just to go back to the point about the commission and the workers, the commission was very conscious that there is an industrial relations process that is ongoing at the moment and did not want to encroach on that. That was the big reason the commission did not meet the workers.