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

The victims of the secret payments and the organised cover-up and deception around those payments are the ordinary licence holders who can go to jail if they do not pay their TV licence and the nearly 1,800 workers in RTÉ who did not benefit from these staggering salaries, payments or slush funds but who often exist on low or very modest pay and endured pay cuts, pay freezes, bogus self-employment, abuse of fixed-term contracts and lack of resources and equipment to do their job. They deserve accountability and radical reform to address the rotten culture that produced this scandal.

Last week, at a committee of which I am not a member but which I attended, in the four hours before I spoke not a single person called out the use of the word "talent" by members of the RTÉ executive until I asked how they could use that obnoxious term to distinguish between a small group at the top paid staggering salaries and the vast majority of the workforce. The next day, Siún Ní Raghallaigh had to come in, apologise and say she was binning that term. I called that out because the use of that term was indicative of the problem deep in the heart of the culture of RTÉ. There is the talent at the top and everybody else is not talent. That was the implication and that then goes on to justify one law for a small group at the top with staggering salaries, secret payments, slush funds and everybody else tightening their belts and enduring rubbish contracts, no contracts, pay freezes and pay cuts.

The other point I was the first to put at that committee was that this was an organised, orchestrated deception of the public, the Oireachtas and the workers. Again, Siún Ní Raghallaigh had to come in the next day and use exactly the terms that I had put to her and acknowledge that was the case. If there was an organised deception, somebody organised it. That is self-evident and we need to know who. We still do not know who. Fingers were pointed in certain directions but some of the people at whom those fingers were pointed have still not come before Oireachtas committees. They need to come and give their side of the story. Maybe we will learn more and maybe it will look different but those people have to come into the Oireachtas committee. We do not need to wait for reviews, audits or anything else for that to happen. Members of the public are furious and deserve to know. The workers also deserve to know. That has to happen as a matter of urgency.

We need then to investigate the corrosive impact of commercial interests and outside interests on the culture in RTÉ and how those interests could impact on the vitally important question of public service broadcasting. I want to make a point absolutely clear, as I did last week. If we do not have public service broadcasting there to serve the public, the broadcasting we will get is the broadcasting of Rupert Murdoch, Elon Musk and big corporate for-profit entities. Those are the only two choices. Either we have publicly funded, public service broadcasting or we have Rupert Murdoch, Musk and all the rest of them. I know what I want. I want to at least have the choice of having public service broadcasting. The condition is that it is funded properly, as it needs to be, and not by commercial interests or a regressive tax, where one can go to jail, but through fair and progressive taxation. Let us start to tax some of these social media companies, digital streaming companies and so on, which are making a fortune and, in many cases, not even paying for their access to the Irish market in terms of what they pay.

We need to look at some other issues now that certain things have become apparent. I want these included in the Minister's audit and review. The independent production fund needs to be looked at. I have been trying to raise this for years. There will be a debate on Thursday, one I will be interested to hear, on a report that I asked the committee of which I am a member to do on section 481 film expenditure. This spending of €100 million is supplemented by €40 million from the independent production fund at RTÉ and €20 million from Screen Ireland, all of which goes to the independent production sector. I am in favour of that money, and more, going into independent film production but there have to be conditions attached to ensure that what we have just witnessed at the top of RTÉ is not also going on in the independent production sector, and we have very strong allegations that it is. We are told by the representatives of the actors and performers, both within RTÉ and in terms of the public money used to fund the independent production sector, that actors, performers and writers are being robbed of their royalties and that the copyright directive, under which they are entitled by law to those royalties, is being flouted systematically by the producers who get money from RTÉ, section 481 and Screen Ireland.

That needs to be investigated. How much is being paid in producer fees to the companies that are getting money from that fund? I was told today by somebody who I asked that some of them are getting €5,000 a week and the production companies are getting a slice off the top as well. We need to find out whether that is true because, on the other side of that, we have film crew who are on fixed-term contracts but, at the end of a production, it is as if they have never worked in the film industry. The clock goes back to zero. They say that systematic abuse of the legislation on fixed-term workers is happening in the Irish film industry using money from RTÉ.

I have also heard people say today that they go to RTÉ with ideas for productions. They are told they are not getting the money but, a little while later, a favoured few do exactly the same thing they suggested to RTÉ. They do not get the funding for it; those who are the favoured few do. Are there conflicts of interest between those at the top of RTÉ who say "Yes" or "No" to independent film production and some of those independent film production companies? We need to know that as well as part of this review and audit.

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