Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. The Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin, met the director general on the day the McCann report was published. That report dealt with the voluntary redundancy schemes of 2017 and 2020. Yesterday's meeting between the Minister, the DG and the chairperson was in relation to termination packages. We need all transparency on this to the extent that is possible within the law.

There are many recommendations in the report of the Future of Media Commission. These are very good recommendations, and we are implementing them all. There is one outstanding that we still need to make a decision on and that is on the abolition of the TV licence. As the Deputy knows, the Future of Media Commission recommended the use of Exchequer funding. There is a real difficulty with that because the use of Exchequer funding would mean that the Government of the day would control how much money goes to RTÉ and the public service media. I am looking across at somebody who might be the Taoiseach in the next Government, who is currently suing RTÉ and who would have a huge conflict of interests.

See this speech in context