Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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Mr. Bakhurst spoke about the orchestra. I like the orchestra as well. Mr. Bakhurst says the mood music is nice but the mood music from the emails I have received is that a lot of it is very out-of-step and out-of-tune. I welcome the witnesses. There are some old faces and some new faces. Anything I say here is not directed at anyone personally but I have lost all faith in RTÉ. Mr. Bakhurst mentioned its different programming, the "RTÉ Investigates" programme on the horse cruelty affair and all the different "RTÉ Investigates" programmes but who are we going to do an independent investigation into the shenanigans that went on in RTÉ? We have had two phoney reports.

Would they do phoney reports, as I call them because they are only just semantics, skipping over criminality that has gone in RTÉ? There was basic, naked criminality and I called for the fraud squad to be sent in there, or CAB. The Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005 has been flouted for the last 30 years, knowingly, to the head of Revenue, the Secretary General of the Department of Finance and the Secretary General of the Department of social welfare. RTÉ has unlimited access as an entity to do deals, sit down with Revenue and discuss these issues. We see there is a figure of €15.2 million earmarked to address a portion of the settlements related to unpaid PRSI.

Without sounding repetitive, I as a businessman do not have that opportunity nor does any other businessman in the country. They pay their taxes properly, they do not have massive penalties, interest and fines and I cannot understand how the sacred cow that is out in Montrose can just do these deals with the nod and a wink to the Secretaries General of both Departments. Revenue will not take responsibility for it and neither will the Department of social welfare. The law has clearly been flouted. Any other employer attempting to do one thousandth of that could be in prison and would definitely be closed down and out of business.

The thinking and the mood music around here relates to how RTÉ is going to address that loss and that accruing bill that is out there for the workers. The workers are contractors and there are hundreds of workers. RTÉ is going to dismiss 400 of them now, or they will be voluntarily exits they have said, and many of them have already been pushed out and have no pension. Senior broadcaster who we liked from different programmes have not even got a pension because of the illegality and the malpractice that has been flourishing at RTÉ and has been nourished by both Revenue and the Department of social welfare. They are allowed to do it and have got away with it under successive Ministers. This is all a big game and they got their €20 million already from the Minister of taxpayers' money. I knew that would happen before we break up for the summer. We will have the report tomorrow and we will all go away into the sunset and everything will be fine, but it is not fine.

There is a moral compass that has been completely stamped on and the treatment of the workers has been awful; they are the backbone of the organisation and they have had their morale flattened and their jobs put at risk by a succession of scandals. This strategy here lacks a clear appreciation or respect for those workers. They have forced and coerced people and we had the National Union of Journalists, NUJ, here the last day I was here and they were in the middle of this. They were up to here with the law-breaking and corruption that went on. They were up to there with it and they are all in this together; they used other parlance but it has gone on, there are semantics happening here and I am going to fix it. I honestly feel we need a much more radical approach.

There are other parts of legislation that I am informed have been flouted as well. There is law breaking; are we going to get BBC Panorama to come in and do an investigation into RTÉ? There are some very good "RTÉ Investigates" programmes, but as I said in the past there have been very damaging ones to companies where they went over the top completely and behaved illegally in hiring drivers who were bogus drivers and were not drivers at all. That happened at a lorry company and it is disgusting that RTÉ would do that to make a presentational programme to destroy a man's livelihood and a business. The Department of Transport then came in and tried to take the licence off him because of what was put in the programme, and God rest him as he is deceased now.

Yes, public service broadcasting has a duty and we need to radically examine it here but it cannot be at the expense of somebody else. The fat cats in RTÉ, and I am not saying anyone here is one, and people coming in and there was question as to why people would not come in and give evidence and testimony. Are they going to be paid a €400,000 figure? The whole thing is filthy. A much more radical approach needs to be taken in that RTÉ needs to not only contemplate selling but sell Montrose and drive the sacred cow out past the Red Cow and put the cow out somewhere in the country where we can all have a little go at milking her. I say that in an honest parlance, we can all have a share. If people could contain their laughter I would appreciate it. Everyone could have access, including the young people who aspire to join the orchestra and aspire to become journalists. We could have it in Portlaoise or Mullingar in the midlands. Bring it back to basics where it started. Look at the tremendous success of TG4.

This tinkering and playing around that we are doing here is like rubbing butter on a fat sow's you know where.