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

The situation at RTÉ is an unholy mess and a scandal that has done extraordinary damage to the vital institution of public service broadcasting in this country. It involves secret payments mislabelled as consultancy; an organised deception of the public, the Dáil and the workers in RTÉ; a barter account that looks like a slush fund, and then three barter accounts that may look like slush funds; no accountability about any of this; staggering salaries for a favoured few at the top; a group of people who work week in, week out for RTÉ and look just like employees but are labelled as contractors; and an obnoxious notion of "the talent" for a few at the top suggesting that the vast majority of people who actually make the programmes and make the institution work are not somehow talent.

All of this is an insult to the television licence-paying public, who could go to jail if they do not pay that licence, and to the vast majority of RTÉ workers, including journalists, crew and so on, who make RTÉ function.

It is welcome that Ryan Tubridy and Noel Kelly are coming to the committees. As soon as Dee Forbes and Jim Jennings recover, I hope they will also come in. Siún Ní Raghallaigh, in response to a question I asked last week, acknowledged that there was an organised deception; those were her words. We do not know who organised it, but somebody organised it. Those people need to be held to account. We also need to know whether there is more. Questions have to be asked about contracts for services to RTÉ. Were they tendered out in a transparent way? I have heard, for example, of issues around chauffeur services that were not properly tendered out. I have asked about the independent production fund and whether similar things are going on in film production, where allegations along those lines have been made.

Of course, we need an audit and reviews of the entire matter and the culture and governance of RTÉ. I put it to the Taoiseach, however, that certain things are very clear and evident right now. We need salary caps on these staggering and exorbitant salaries that are aligned with public sector pay scales. We need direct employment of people who are actually employees of RTÉ rather than contractors bargaining for extraordinary salaries. We need a proper funding model for RTÉ that is not contaminated by commercial and advertising imperatives where this rot we have seen over the past number of weeks starts.

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