Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)

I find it a little unacceptable, to go back to Mr. McKeon - though it is not personal - to talk about an ecosystem. The word "eco" does not apply here. We have workers working in terrible conditions. They have no certainty. They try to get a second job. They cannot do that because they cannot say when they will be available. It is doubly ironic that they are broadcasting what I am saying today and what the witnesses are saying and then they have to face these conditions. It is not good for the reputation of Dáil Éireann to be entering into a contract like that. Reputational damage was talked about earlier on. This is certainly reputational damage and the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission has to go back to look at this. It absolutely does. I have very little time to look at which is most cost-effective. That is for experts to decide. However, I cannot stand over something like that. I do not think the witnesses can either. I do not expect them to answer me. It is broadcasting for democracy and we have increased the number of people participating in democracy because of the channel. I cannot believe the number of people looking at it. Yet, these are just appalling conditions. The details have been gone into. It is just important to make the point at this stage. I cannot accept it.

The last point is in relation to the Irish language and the visibility of the language. Mr. Finnegan will know I said I had - I was going to say the dubious distinction - the difficult distinction of chairing a subcommittee for six months. We came up with very practical suggestions to make the Irish visible and normalise it. I have not seen these suggestions being rolled out and that committee report has gone to some shelf somewhere. Let us take the restaurant, for example. Irish should be visible. Everything should be in Irish and English everywhere we go. I have run out of time and I have given out so much about time I will have to stop. These are very practical issues that could be sorted out very quickly but there seems to be a dragging of the feet all of the time.