Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle. We are now just weeks into this scandal and for RTÉ, it just gets worse with daily photographs of highly-paid RTÉ presenters using RTÉ State-owned properties as a backdrop to their latest commercial advertisements and promotions. This needs to stop now and RTÉ management needs to get a grip on this immediately until there is a root and branch review of these practices within RTÉ.

I welcome the Government's commitment to a forensic audit of RTÉ and its commercial entity. It is clear there has been a culture, long suspected by many, of senior people in RTÉ being paid eye-watering salaries for a station that is paid for by the State and by the people through their television licence, and which is constantly coming to the Government to increase the licence fee. While I am discussing the licence fee, as a family support worker I once had to support a very sick woman in court. She was the mother of five children whose finances were below the poverty line. I stood in the court in the old Richmond Hospital and saw this mother absolutely terrified that she would get a massive fine or, worse, go to jail for non-payment of that fine. In fairness to the judge, he actually saw that this woman was in very poor health and he did not impose any fines on her. I look at it now I see the money that was used by RTÉ to wine and dine its clients, to pay its talent such unbelievable salaries and in one case, the payment through a barter account of several hundred thousand euro.

At the Committee of Public Accounts, it was clear that the RTÉ board and executive had been in emergency session from the previous meeting. However, their responses there still left a lot of us scratching our heads in disbelief. Comments from the RTÉ chairperson at least cut through some of the evasiveness from others at the committee when she stated:

As a trained accountant and a former financial controller, I am appalled as to how payments were recorded and presented in the RTÉ accounts. ... It appears to me that this was an act designed to deceive.

At the same time, many workers in RTÉ have had their pay cut. They have had to struggle with jobs not being filled and with equipment being substandard. We can all understand their utter anger and frustration being misled by RTÉ management and by one of the highest-paid presenters in the State. The protests we have seen at RTÉ over the past weeks is pent-up anger at what they themselves have seen at RTÉ for many years.

What we have heard about RTÉ's use of its commercial income to spend massive amounts of money on entertaining their clients is appalling. We now know that the barter account was used to spend at least €275,000 on rugby tickets, concert tickets and a bus to bring people from Drumcondra to Croke Park. I am a regular user of Croke Park. My God, imagine getting a bus paid for from Drumcondra to Croke Park. One guy said to me this week that if anybody knows what it is like going to a concert there, one would be quicker walking than wasting time and money to sit on a bus. RTÉ executives, however, believed they were different. On the issue of tickets for the rugby and the Champions League matches, we need to know who got these tickets. I note that at the committee last week, there was a refusal to name these people or their companies by those who were before the committee to try to bring clarity and transparency to the proceedings. We need to know who knew what and when, and if any illegality took place using the barter account.

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