Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

In my view, the stakes are very high in the RTÉ secret payments scandal, and the impact it has on public service broadcasting. I do not want to live in a world where the only sources of news and broadcasting are Elon Musk, Rupert Murdoch, Mark Zuckerberg and big for-profit corporations. At least public service broadcasting is supposed to be not-for-profit and serving the public interest and can be held accountable. This scandal has seriously jeopardised the credibility of public service broadcasting.

I sat through that committee yesterday for four and a half hours. There was a lot of detail, and in some ways you can get lost in the detail, but it seems to me that a couple of issues absolutely stand out. The vast majority of ordinary workers in RTÉ were asked to endure a 15% pay cut, in many cases on top of poor contracts and conditions of employment, low pay for huge numbers of them, bogus self-employment, stand-by contracts and buyout contracts for actors and performers. However, one performer did not want to take the pay cut and a group of people, or one person - it seems to me it has to be a group - conspired to make sure that presenter did not take the pain. They then hatched a plot to conceal that fact from the public, who, let us remember, fund RTÉ and can go to jail if they do not pay their TV licence, from the Oireachtas, and from the vast majority of RTÉ workers who work in their-----

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