Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

The State will have a hard job collecting the television licence fee in 2023. People are asking where the money goes to. They have seen €345,000 in secret payments for Ryan Tubridy, and nearly €250,000 going on Irish Rugby Football Union, IRFU, Rugby World Cup tickets for corporate clients and so on. In the best of times, the television licence was always a regressive tax in that the rich man or woman pays as much as the poor man or woman. No grounds of inability to pay are considered, for example, and in the best years a campaign of coercion was needed to get television licence money from many people. It is not unusual for 10,000 people in a year to be dragged in front of the courts for non-payment. It is not unknown for more than 400 people in a year to be jailed for non-payment. I do not think any of that will prevent a high level of non-payment in 2023.

In the past weeks, we have seen not one but two RTÉs. We have seen the RTÉ of stars, agents and RTÉ top management. We have also seen the RTÉ of ordinary workers who took pay cuts, had poor contracts, and suffered under a regime of bogus self-employment. They were also the victims. We have seen another voice come from among those workers, which is typified by people such as a former worker, Ciaran Mullooly, and Emma O'Kelly, who stand in the best public service broadcasting traditions and, in many cases, are the voice of trade union activists. It is activists and workers such as these, including the general public, documentary makers and artists, who need to be brought to the heart of decision-making within RTÉ. We need a clear-out of the managers involved in the old regime, an end to the star system with the capping of salaries, abolition of the licence fee, and 100% publicly funded public service broadcasting to be funded from steeply progressive taxation, which should include a tax on the profits and advertising revenues of the social media giants.

On the situation in Cork, it has been said by RTÉ that the suitability of studios there is being assessed. It is possible the studios will be sold and elsewhere will be rented. That is a backward step that will be resisted. When Newstalk closed its Cork studios, it was virtually the end, certainly for the vast majority, of live interviews from the city. The Cork studios broadcast the "Today" show, the "Nationwide" slot, "The John Creedon Show" and so on. Those studios absolutely must be kept.

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