Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

While I agree with what the Minister just said, it surprises me. RTE chases ratings the same as every other channel. It has a public service remit and on current affairs and sport it does a really good job. However, on most of the television outside current affairs it is all about ratings. RTE defends the salaries it pays to its top earners by saying these are the people who deliver the ratings and the advertising revenue based on that. Let us not be naive on this. RTE is talking about a reality celebrity boxing match, for God's sake. What is that about? Is that about public service broadcasting or ratings? It is about advertising and raising more revenue.

Let us have an honest debate on this. RTE is not a public service broadcaster in the same way the BBC is because it relies on advertising for half its revenue, so it is also a commercial station. We should not apply the same standards that apply to purist public service broadcasters in other countries which have no advertising revenue. People sometimes do that and it is unfair to RTE. The Minister says we should have no role in RTE salaries but I do not accept that. We should know what the top earners in RTE are earning. We only find out three years later. The most up-to-date figures are from 2006.

Some of this is public money and we are entitled to know how it is spent, who it is spend on, how much is spent and whether people justify that level of pay. Because of how it is structured through media company structures whereby people are paid indirectly through contracts that are negotiated for two, three or four years, we do not have that information. The Minister needs to address that.

I will withdraw my amendment No. 80 because the proposal on setting the figure of €400,000 is a little clumsy, but I wanted to table the amendment to make the point. It is not political interference for the Minister to ensure the Oireachtas knows how much is being spent on salaries and on whom. We know how much the employees and the Director General are paid in RTE, and rightly so because he has to publish that every year. Yet we do not know how much the high earners are being paid.

See this speech in context