Sinéad Gibney (Dublin Rathdown, Social Democrats)

At a meeting of the Oireachtas media committee yesterday, RTÉ executives revealed yet more wasted spending at the State broadcaster. An IT project, specifically a channel management system, went over budget by nearly €1 million. This comes just weeks after we learned, for the first time, about a €3.6 million writedown for another botched IT project. That is nearly €5 million either overspent or wasted on IT projects alone. These are only the projects we know about because RTÉ did not volunteer this information. The revelation that €900,000 was overspent on a channel management system only came to light when I asked a direct question at the end of a two-hour session of questioning. It had to be dragged out of them, which is hugely concerning.

While RTÉ executives have been screaming from the rooftops about a €150,000 payment to Ryan Tubridy for nearly two years, they wasted more than 30 times that figure on IT cock-ups alone and did not bother telling anyone about it until very recently. Shamefully, it is ordinary workers who are bearing the brunt of this mismanagement with cutbacks and redundancies. Is the Tánaiste concerned about this latest revelation? Is he happy RTÉ is being sufficiently transparent? Is he concerned there is more waste in RTÉ that we are yet to learn about?

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