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

Yesterday, we were told there was significant pushback from that individual on the 15% pay cut. That is what we were told in the committee. Okay? The problem is that there were also secret payments made, and they were - I do not think there is any other way to describe it - laundered through Renault and then mislabelled as consultancy fees when they clearly were not. If we take what we heard yesterday at face value, and I am not saying we should, by the way, we need to get to the bottom of that. Is that true? We need answers and accountability to ensure this never happens again, and so people get to the truth.

It is important because at the back of it is this cultural problem.

There is a group called "the talent" who are treated in one way and then there are all the other workers in there who endured pay cuts, had to put up with pay freezes, bogus self-employment and buy-out contracts. I also heard mention of screen producers, which is another area that should be investigated. There is the €40 million which goes from RTÉ to the independent film production sector. Workers in that sector are saying that they are being abused and being robbed of proper conditions of employment.

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