Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

It is absolutely true to say that the RTÉ omnishambles has been dragging on for months and is getting worse by the month under the Minister's management. It is a depressing soap opera that is dragging down the confidence of the people within RTÉ. It is also having a financial impact. We see that the amounts collected in licence fees are collapsing, which is obviously also damaging to RTÉ. It is also having a significant effect on morale within RTÉ. The Minister's stewardship of this particular role over the last nine months has led to things getting worse in RTÉ. Even on that issue of the licence fee, it is important to say that this Government will not make a decision about the licence fee because, for the Government, inertia is a better strategy in an election year. It simply will not make a decision. It will not risk doing so in case it has a negative effect on the electoral chances of Government Members with the people of Ireland.

One of the things that is really frustrating about this fiasco factory is that it is eclipsing much of what is happening in Ireland at the moment. There are incredible difficulties. I am thinking of the national children's hospital. I sometimes wonder whether it is easier for people to understand a €200,000 exit package than the €2.25 billion of wasted investment represented by the overspend on the national children's hospital. Some 3,150 people have died as a result of accidents in HSE services over the last five years while 1,100 people died before an ambulance arrived because ambulances are arriving later and later. Some €300 million has been spent on metro north before a shovel has been put into the ground. People in Midleton are staying awake at night to act as human water gauges because of the lack of flood defences. Despite this, the bandwidth within Leinster House has been pretty much consumed by this ongoing and rolling omnishambles, which the Minister is involved in.

Even within RTÉ itself, really big questions such as the question of bogus self-employment are still not being dealt with. There exists a dichotomy in Irish society between the inner circle who are able to achieve the golden handshakes and the mothers and fathers who are in the middle of commuter hell trying to get to work and who are being forced onto bogus self-employment contracts to insulate their employers from having to pay proper sick pay, holiday pay or pension entitlements. None of those issues is being dealt with because we are flooded by the fiasco factory that has continued to produce these problems.

It is obviously the case that the Minister has not been surefooted. That is the kindest I can be about the Minister's actions over the last while. Her sacking of the chair of the RTÉ board on television the day before she was meant to speak to her was incredible. It is impossible to understand how a senior Minister would not expect a question from Miriam O'Callaghan as to her confidence in the chair. If it is the case that she was not expecting it, that raises serious question about her ability to do the job and about her experience. Is she experienced enough to fulfil her role?

The deep problem here is that the Minister is approaching these problems in an extraordinarily bureaucratic fashion. The item that highlights this approach the most is that information was given to the head of her Department last October that indicated that there had been a conclusion to the negotiations. Anybody with an ounce of curiosity would have asked what that conclusion was. However, the Minister did not even ask that question. Strategic ignorance has been used as a strategy by Ministers in the past in respect of these types of things. They do not ask because, if they do, they will know the information and will then be responsible for it. They also claim that senior people in their Department do not tell them such information.

Again, that insulates the Minister from responsibility in that regard. This is not credible at all and I do not think that anybody in the whole country believes it. It is continuing with the pretence that nobody in the Minister's Department asked what were the results of the conclusions of that negotiation. That nobody there asked this is just impossible to believe. Consider also the case where letters were being written to the chair instead of just picking up the phone. This was for issues where the Minister's connection with RTÉ was through the chair and not through anybody else. It does not show a fix-it approach of get up and go to resolve it in a practical manner. It shows an approach of a person fully confined and limited to very narrow avenues of trying to resolve really important questions. In those situations one needs a practical fixer rather than a person who is literally just a functionary on the sidelines to the crisis happening at the moment. I ask the Minister, Deputy Martin, to deal with that. How come nobody asked a question regarding the result of those negotiations?

I also want to know the timeline around when the Minister spoke to her party leader or the Taoiseach, by phone or by text, about the "Prime Time" interview. Will the Minister also explain why Katherine Licken left the Department? What were the reasons for her leaving her particular role?

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