Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Thanks very much, Deputy. At the outset, I want to express my best wishes to Deputy McDonald, who is currently recovering from surgery. I hope that she makes a very swift recovery and will be back in action as soon as possible and as soon as she is well again.

The revelations from RTÉ last week are deeply unsettling and they have shaken public trust in what is an important institution. We want to see trust restored quickly because we need a strong public service broadcaster for our State. It is important to acknowledge, as Deputy Doherty did, that the vast majority of staff in RTÉ would have known nothing about this and certainly did not benefit from it in any way. It is important that we put that fact on the record.

As far as we know, at least so far, the issue of hidden fees relates to only one RTÉ personality, not to any of the others. That is now being confirmed at the moment, but it is important that we are fair and do not cast aspersions on people who actually took pay cuts and did not receive hidden fees. That appears to be the case, but it has to be subject to confirmation.

Regarding the former director general, Dee Forbes, I agree that she should appear before a committee. The fact that she is no longer the director general does not mean that she cannot. I believe it is appropriate that she should tell her side of the story and give us her version of events. That has been done to an extent in a statement, but I think people would like to ask more questions and interrogate that statement somewhat.

There will be a further statement from the board, issuing more detail, at 3 p.m. today. The Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin, has secured that commitment from the chairperson of the board. Grant Thornton is examining the issue of the payments made between 2017 and 2019. We will have that information once it is available, but that was prior to the period of this board's office. We will get that information out into the public domain once we have it.

The Government has initiated a thorough review of the governance of RTÉ and the Minister briefed the Cabinet on that this morning. The Minister also wrote to the chairperson of the board, Siún Ní Raghallaigh, and the deputy director general, Adrian Lynch, yesterday setting out our expectation as a Government that the relevant members of the board, the executive and all relevant senior staff should attend and engage fully with Oireachtas committees examining these matters and with the independent review.

We expect nothing but full and open discussions and answers from RTÉ. The public and those who work in RTÉ who had no knowledge or involvement in this deserve nothing less. The chairperson of RTÉ confirmed this morning to the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Deputy Martin, that the executive board is finalising a statement for issue today at 3 p.m. which I understand will set out what happened in greater detail and from the perspective of the executive, detailing the timeline of when decisions were made, explaining how these types of payments are handled, and who had responsibility and awareness in these discussions.

RTÉ in very many ways plays a very important role in our society with its Irish language broadcasting, children's programmes, drama, sport, good quality news, documentaries, election coverage and the provision of important public information including, for example, during the pandemic, and we need to be cognisant of that. If things were done that were wrong, and I believe things that were done were wrong, that needs to stop. It needs to change and people need to be held to account, but the institution needs to be restored and to survive.

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