Results 8,421-8,440 of 10,454 for speaker:Niamh Smyth

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: RTÉ Oversight and Long-Term Support and Funding: Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media (4 Oct 2023)

Niamh Smyth: Final, Senator.

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: RTÉ Oversight and Long-Term Support and Funding: Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media (4 Oct 2023)

Niamh Smyth: I call Senator Sherlock.

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: RTÉ Oversight and Long-Term Support and Funding: Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media (4 Oct 2023)

Niamh Smyth: On that we have to conclude. I thank Senator Cassells. I am now going to call-----

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: RTÉ Oversight and Long-Term Support and Funding: Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media (4 Oct 2023)

Niamh Smyth: Briefly, Minister.

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: RTÉ Oversight and Long-Term Support and Funding: Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media (4 Oct 2023)

Niamh Smyth: Very quickly, Senator Cassells.

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: RTÉ Oversight and Long-Term Support and Funding: Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media (4 Oct 2023)

Niamh Smyth: Okay. Deputy Cannon is next. He has nine minutes-plus at this rate.

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: RTÉ Oversight and Long-Term Support and Funding: Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media (4 Oct 2023)

Niamh Smyth: Thanks Deputy Cannon, particularly for sticking to the time. Senator Ahearn is next.

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: RTÉ Oversight and Long-Term Support and Funding: Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media (4 Oct 2023)

Niamh Smyth: I thank the Minister and the Deputy very much. I have to move on. I have given the Deputy his full allocation of time, and more beyond that.

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: RTÉ Oversight and Long-Term Support and Funding: Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media (4 Oct 2023)

Niamh Smyth: It is my turn now. Then we will have time for a quickfire round at the end. I will pick up on some of the points some of my colleagues made and tease them out a little further. Senator Byrne raised the issue of the commercial arm of RTÉ versus its public service broadcasting obligation. It is problematic that there is no clear delineation of where funding goes. It is all mixed into...

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: RTÉ Oversight and Long-Term Support and Funding: Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media (4 Oct 2023)

Niamh Smyth: I know that is to its advantage, but when it all goes in together, we do not have sight of the clear delineation between the two and how moneys are spent.

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: RTÉ Oversight and Long-Term Support and Funding: Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media (4 Oct 2023)

Niamh Smyth: Okay, so you are happy with that aspect of things. Obviously, Minister, you would have listened in very attentively to all the hearings we held. As you know, my colleagues put many hours not just into committee meetings but also into the preparation, which was enormous. The secretariat put many hours into all that. When Ms Doherty came in here and I asked her about her knowledge of what...

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: RTÉ Oversight and Long-Term Support and Funding: Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media (4 Oct 2023)

Niamh Smyth: Do you believe her?

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: RTÉ Oversight and Long-Term Support and Funding: Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media (4 Oct 2023)

Niamh Smyth: Do you believe she could walk down the corridors of RTÉ for the past eight years and know none of this to be happening underneath her nose?

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: RTÉ Oversight and Long-Term Support and Funding: Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media (4 Oct 2023)

Niamh Smyth: She was a leadership figure for a board, and that conduit was communicating with you and the executive. It is problematic that RTÉ would establish itself as an executive board. I think that is gone. It should be gone. It should never have been there. In my view - I do not know whether or not my colleagues would agree - and from the hearings we had, they saw themselves as above the...

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: RTÉ Oversight and Long-Term Support and Funding: Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media (4 Oct 2023)

Niamh Smyth: -----and even to us as a committee. I do not think anybody would disagree. All we ever got from them was lip service.

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: RTÉ Oversight and Long-Term Support and Funding: Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media (4 Oct 2023)

Niamh Smyth: Can you be confident that that executive board is completely disbanded?

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: RTÉ Oversight and Long-Term Support and Funding: Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media (4 Oct 2023)

Niamh Smyth: Of course it did.

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: RTÉ Oversight and Long-Term Support and Funding: Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media (4 Oct 2023)

Niamh Smyth: It said a lot, though, about where they were living in their own heads.

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: RTÉ Oversight and Long-Term Support and Funding: Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media (4 Oct 2023)

Niamh Smyth: Time will tell.

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media: RTÉ Oversight and Long-Term Support and Funding: Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media (4 Oct 2023)

Niamh Smyth: Mr. Rory Coveney came in here and we tried to interrogate a little with him around Toy Show: The Musical. Minister, you and I both know, as other colleagues do, coming from an arts background, that €2 million is a staggering figure to be spent on a musical. When we tried to probe that first, Mr. Coveney said to me that it was commercially sensitive and that he could not answer the...