Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I send my best wishes to my party leader, Deputy Mary Lou McDonald, as she recovers from her surgery.

Tá an pobal míthreorach agus ligthe síos go dona mar gheall ar an scéal faoi íocaíochtaí breise RTÉ do Ryan Tubridy. Caithfidh trédhearcacht agus cuntasacht a bheith ann. Tá muinín an phobail in RTÉ iontach lag agus tá ceisteanna bunúsacha le freagairt go fóill ag RTÉ. The hidden payments scandal uncovered at RTÉ is shocking. Trust must be at the very heart of our public broadcaster. For the public to have confidence in the information RTÉ shares, the truth should be fundamental and non-negotiable, yet that trust now lies in tatters. The recent revelations are an example of a cosy consensus, an insider culture, that has existed in this State for far too long. While many workers, including at RTÉ, work hard day in, day out on ordinary salaries, it is a very different story for those at the top. Journalists on low pay have been locked into trade union disputes, fighting hard for fair pay and conditions. They and their trade union representatives were told by RTÉ's top brass time and time again that there was simply no more money. They and the public were told the top presenters were taking big pay cuts, doing their bit to bear the brunt of the public funding squeeze. Now it has emerged that the money was there all along, just hidden in shady deals that prevented the truth from being known and that ensured those at the top were taken care of without anybody else knowing about it.

Many viewers and RTÉ journalists are wondering how they will be able to trust RTÉ's top executives again. The astonishing web of payments would be appalling in any private company, but is even more astounding when we are dealing with a public sector organisation.

RTÉ and all other public bodies have a responsibility to spend public money in a way that is responsible, fair and transparent. They are accountable to the taxpayer and must act accordingly. The revelations of last week show a total disregard of how public money was spent. People who struggle to pay their annual licence fee at a time of a cost-of-living crisis, and who face significant penalties if they do not pay it, are rightly disgusted by what we have seen and learned over the past week. It is totally unacceptable that in a publicly funded body there would be such disparities in pay, where the well-connected few are on sky-high wages and many ordinary workers are struggling on low and average pay. A culture of secrecy hid this fact. People need to have confidence that RTÉ's top executives are acting with honesty and integrity. That is not asking for much. It should be the bare minimum in any publicly funded body.

Many questions remain to be answered. This cannot be kicked down the road to another inquiry that might takes months or even a year to shed light on the situation. We heard today that the former director general, Dee Forbes, is refusing to come before the Committee of Public Accounts and another committee of the Houses. She has appeared before the Committee of Public Accounts before. In January 2020, she categorically told it that the remuneration of high earners at RTÉ had been cut by 15%. She categorically misled that committee, misled these Houses and misled the public, and she has a responsibility as the former director general of RTÉ to release information into the public domain and to correct the record as soon as possible when she is able to do that.

RTÉ says that it is releasing information about this scandal, but it has made it clear that it is refusing to put any information about the 2017, 2018 and 2019 payments to Ryan Tubridy into the public domain at this time. That is simply not good enough.

We are a week on from the scandal and we are still being drip-fed information. The Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media has met the chair of RTÉ. Has she asked her about the 2017-19 period of payments? Have the Minister and the rest of the Cabinet been briefed on it? Will the Taoiseach ask the Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin, to instruct the board to put all of the information covering all of the periods into the public domain today?

See this speech in context