Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is interesting, because I never heard the Tánaiste mutter a word when former colleagues in his parliamentary party, for example, Colm Keaveney who served with the Tánaiste and sued the media and sued a journalist in the Irish Independent when he was in the parliamentary party. What about Frank O'Rourke, who is suing the media? John O'Donoghue, the former Ceann Comhairle, is suing the media in Kerry. What about former Senator Larry Butler? That is just me Googling in the last five minutes, so do not start this nonsense.

Before there was even a scandal in RTÉ the commission recommended getting rid of the TV licence and replacing it with Exchequer funding. The commission looked at all this. It looked at how to ensure independence. It talked about multi-annual funding that is voted on in the Dáil. The Government has decided to dismiss that. It says it wants a universal fee applied to every single household, another household charge. The commission is very clear that is not the approach we should be taking. TG4 is not licence fee-funded; it is Exchequer-funded. Is the Tánaiste suggesting there is interference with the editorial control of TG4? The reality is people have lost faith in RTÉ. People are being summonsed before the courts at a rate of 60 per day for non-payment of the TV licence. It is time to implement the commission's recommendations of three years ago to scrap the TV licence, replace it with Exchequer funding and put in place the multi-annual funding we need so RTÉ and other public service content media can thrive in future.

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