Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Government wants to see a strong future for public service broadcasting in this country. This is something we all put a very high value on. That is why it has been so disappointing to see what has emerged in the past couple of weeks in the context of the breach of trust, the lack of transparency in respect of salaries and the challenges and weaknesses with regard to governance. That is why the Government is taking this matter so seriously. The Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin, is putting in place an independent external review of governance and culture at RTÉ in order to ensure that we can address the issues that exist. We expect RTÉ management and directors who are due to come before the committee today to be fully transparent with regard to answering the questions we have put to them. We need to ensure that those questions are answered, that trust is restored, that it is absolutely clear that there is a solid and strong governance structure in place into the future in RTÉ and that there is absolute transparency. Unfortunately, that has not been the case in the past couple of weeks. That is why we are taking this matter so seriously and taking steps to ensure that the matter is addressed.

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