Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 25 November 2021

Public Accounts Committee

2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 33 - Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media
Chapter 7 - Oversight of Funding for the European Capital of Culture 2020

9:30 am

Ms Katherine Licken:

With regard to the context of the question, what I was trying to say is I do not have the exact timeline as to when this first came to the attention of the Department - meaning this Department or the Department that formerly had responsibility - and the staff. I will get that for the Deputy. Having said that, there are governance frameworks in place within RTÉ as well as our oversight. The purpose of these frameworks is to surface these types of issues and deal with them. When issues come to our attention we absolutely speak to RTÉ all the time about what it will do about them and what measures it will put in place. We monitor how it rectifies them. We know it has made a settlement with the Revenue Commissioners. We know it is engages with the Department of Social Protection. These are very complex individual contracts that have to be worked through. We absolutely keep a very close eye on it.