Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I express my solidarity with the workers of Iceland Foods, some of whom have had to stage a sit-in at the Talbot Street store. I was with them late last night. It is shameful that they feel they have to stage a sit-in in order to get the wages that are due to them. Some are owed more than €1,000. These are minimum-wage jobs. The staff are owed holiday pay. It is shameful that some people have gone to the Department of Social Protection to find out that their employment was terminated a week before they actually finished working in the employment. There are very serious issues now with regard to the conduct of the company that took over the Iceland shops. I refer to its compliance with collective redundancy legislation and how it has terminated the contracts of some people. I extend my solidarity to those workers.

As I speak, we have RTÉ employees across the country staging protests outside Montrose and elsewhere. It is important, amid the crisis that is engulfing the national broadcaster, to express our solidarity with those employees because, in some cases, they have given a lifetime of commitment to public service, to bring us sport, current affairs and entertainment. They have been treated with utter disrespect. This is very frustrating for those of us who want to have a strong national broadcaster. We very much need that in this country. We do not want to go down the road of other countries. What has happened has given rise to profound questions with regard to the RTÉ board and how it could function and not have oversight of some of the large commercial contracts agreed by the organisation and fees paid to some of its staff. There are also questions about RTÉ's business model, in which it can treat some of its workers like gods, yet effectively then have a penny-pinching approach to other employees. We need value for money but it has to be right across the board.The key issue is that some workers were told that projects had to be abandoned and pay increases had to be constrained, all in the name of bringing RTÉ into a sustainable financial position. RTÉ needs massive investment but it has done itself an enormous disservice. The clarion call across the political system has to be that we need to hear from both current and former RTÉ executives as to what exactly happened. The very survival of RTÉ is at stake now, and we need a strong national broadcaster. It simply cannot be countenanced that we would see any sort of reform or taking apart of our national broadcaster because of the sins of a few.