Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

I start by sending my solidarity to Palestinians worldwide in the face of the Israeli State's campaign against the civilians of Jenin. Bombs are hitting the city and its refugee camp as we speak. I condemn the murder of 11 Palestinians, including two children, by the Israeli State. I fear that we will see many more civilians lose their lives over the coming days. This is a campaign of bombing and attacks on an occupied city. It must be stopped and Ireland must step up now to recognise the state of Palestine, and recognise Israel for what it is, which is an apartheid state that have been carrying out a programme of ethnic cleansing against the people of Palestine for the past 75 years.

I say this for a reason. I concur with my colleague Deputy Connolly's question during Leaders' Questions this morning. I raise it because on RTÉ last night they called the latest attacks an Israeli army operation, and RTÉ had two speakers from the Israeli State but no representation from a Palestinian or from the state of Palestine.

I had listened to a representative of a food courier on the radio last week who was given a clear run of eight minutes on how great the business was and how great it was for workers, and yet that same day we heard Deputy Pringle raising issues here about bogus self-employment and the bad employment of these workers who are paid as little as €1.30 per delivery. Deputy Pringle called for €6 at least per delivery. There is a question mark over the role RTÉ has played and there are questions around the oversight of the debates on RTÉ as well.

The commercial element of RTÉ is a clear danger to the public service that it provides. Public service broadcasting cannot function in a proper way when it is subject to the pressures of the market. It cannot provide balance if it has to fear the loss of advertising revenue or commercial partnerships. I also have serious questions around RTÉ's ability to provide a public service when it is carrying out dodgy deals with commercial partners and when it is wining and dining them across the world at the public's expense.

It has also become clear that RTÉ has been acting less like a public broadcaster with a mandate to deliver a public service and more like a dodgy company that is a rogue employer that actively pursues policies to cheat its workers out of pay and benefits they are entitled to. The Eversheds' report into bogus self-employment at RTÉ found that 150 workers were compensated as contractors when they should have received full employment benefits. The Department of Social Protection investigation found more than 500 bogus self-employments. That 500 workers were being cheated is not just a mistake: it is an intentional policy to cut costs at the expense of workers' livelihoods and well-being. How can the public trust RTÉ when its own employees cannot even trust RTÉ to pay them properly?

I have recently received emails from a group of RTÉ employees outlining this policy of bogus self-employment. They outlined the damning situation for many workers at RTÉ. These are people who are employed by a taxpayer-funded institution and who have spent most of their working lives not receiving proper pay, not receiving proper sick or holiday pay and are set not to receive a proper pension benefit after they retire. This is all happening during these junkets, soirees and jollies and while accounts were set up as secret accounts, if not off balance sheet, which were being used to supplement the compensation of those at the top of RTÉ. Those at the bottom are not just facing being cheated out of pay and benefits, they were also having their work conditions cut and underfunded. Large areas in RTÉ have been massively underfunded. The cost of this is borne by the public through reduced or worse programming, and by the workers who had to shoulder more burden and do more work to keep it all together.

I stand in solidarity with the workers of RTÉ and their outrage that while they faced pay cuts, bogus self-employment and massive under resourcing of their work, those at the top of RTÉ were using moneys in a way they should not have.

I welcome the announcement of a root and branch investigation into RTÉ. I recently raised the issue that when there were food safety concerns at Iceland stores the place was crawling with health and safety officers the next day, but when concerns about workers safety were raised in the Dáil, and concerns about workers not being paid their wages - breaking the Payment of Wages Act - we did not see inspectors crawling the stores to find out what was going on.

I hope that part of this root and branch investigation will ensure that every worker who was placed on a bogus self-employment contract is properly compensated for every single hour of work they have done for RTÉ and that they will have their pension and all other benefits guaranteed and backdated.

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