Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail)
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Thank you, Mr. Hurley, whoever you are. I want to go to the third page of this correspondence. Mr. Hurley has been corresponding directly with RTÉ and that is what I want to deal with.

He sent a copy of the correspondence to RTÉ, which wrote directly back to Mr. Hurley and copied the committee. I want to put on record that RTÉ are dancing around this. If it would just come up like the Department and set the record straight, we could move on. However, for some reason, it is not inclined to do that. RTÉ stated it had asked for the RTÉ 2+1 to be on the Sky platform. I will now read the letter from Ms Forbes to Mr. Hurley, which the committee did not get but which Mr. Hurley sent to us.

Thank you for your email of 5 June 2018.

By way of clarification, Mr. Jennings response at the Public Accounts Committee ... [on] 3 May 2018, relate to RTÉ's submission to the BAI's five-year public funding review, which on the date in question was still under ... consideration ... This submission confirmed RTÉ's intention to formally request permission for the creation of an RTÉ2+1 channel.

By definition, she is saying that it does not exist, as she says that they had not yet made a formal application. She is now saying, which is not fair to the committee, that when we asked a straight question about RTÉ, the response given related to an RTÉ 2 submission to the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, BAI's, five-year public funding review. There was no such reference at the meeting. She cannot now state that the reference to RTÉ related to some document that it had sent to the BAI as part of a five-year review. She is actually giving Mr. Hurley the run-around. There was no reference to that and I cannot accept the validity of the assertion that what was said here related to the submission to the BAI five-year public funding review by RTÉ. I am not buying that. I think we have agreed to write back to RTÉ and ask if it could please look at what the Department did, correct the record and let us move on, and not drag things into it that we know were not part of the discussion at the meeting. I hope that will be conveyed to RTÉ. They are only putting trips on us and on themselves and they are doing themselves no good by dancing around in circles.