Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the witnesses to Leinster House again today. On the opening statements, I welcome the change in tone from RTÉ today and the emphasis, obviously, on the deceptive nature of the transaction. I hope it is a company with greater transparency, not only here today but in the forthcoming weeks and months. The impact of this, as we have seen ourselves with journalists and other staff members who have been out protesting highlighting their concerns, is that morale in RTÉ is through the floor. For me, all of the staff and the tax-paying public, the trust has also been eroded. The mission statement of RTÉ says: "To enrich [which may be a poor choice of words given the discussion today] Irish life with content that challenges, educates and entertains". I suggest we would also look at that mission statement in the next little while.

I can also say it is unsatisfactory with regard to the director general, whatever her status. Yesterday at the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, there was uncertainty about contracts. As I look at all the witnesses here, I wonder if all of their contracts are in order because there was really head scratching as to who had a contract, what was in order and what was not. It is unsatisfactory that we have an acting interim deputy director general who does not have the knowledge that we need. We also have other board members who are new and who cannot give us satisfactory answers. I am aware that an independent report is happening in the next couple of weeks, and hopefully within four weeks it will be reporting and that we as a committee can engage with the witnesses on that.

I will start off with Mr Collins. How long has he worked with RTÉ?