Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Minister on the work she has done so far. She has stepped up to the plate and called in the experts. I am proud to know her as my local TD. Fair play to her; she has done the job. Now that she has started the process, she needs to keep it going. I congratulate both of my colleagues on introducing this Bill which is timely and probably the right thing to do. I accept that perhaps we should wait until we get some further details.

At the outset, I congratulate Seamus Dooley of the National Union of Journalists, as well as SIPTU, Connect Trade Union and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, which passed a motion yesterday in this area. It was not easy for Seamus Dooley to come out. Some of the high-profile people we know in RTÉ have stepped up to the plate, have come on camera and have let their feelings be known. That was not an easy thing for them to do because they were talking about a colleague who certainly did not act as a colleague. The colleague in question was quite happy to do a little deal in the background to see to it that he did not suffer the ravages of pay cuts.

In speaking about the presenter in question, it is important to state that he did no wrong. He had an agent who was able to go in and negotiate a deal, a dirty little deal, which kept him shielded from the worst of the pay cuts that other colleagues had suffered. That is where the problem is in RTÉ. People are acting as agents for contractors who are on massive money and they are called "talent". They are separate from the ordinary workers. My colleague Senator Sherlock has referred to the ordinary workers and the misuse of the Protection of Employees (Fixed-Term Work) Act, abusing workers in public service in this country, giving them miserable hours instead of proper jobs, denying them access to pension schemes and whatever else.

On the bogus self-employment issue, I hope there will be a root-and-branch examination of every single employment contract in RTÉ to see who was brought in under bogus self-employment. It is certainly not good enough. The other day the Taoiseach made the point that maybe the Garda should be involved in this investigation. It cannot be right to take €75,000 from a company, pass it on to a contractor and then give the company €75,000 worth of a credit note. There must be something fraudulent, something wrong, there. I sincerely hope the Minister is speaking to the Garda Síochána and asking if it needs to bring in the fraud squad to look at that.

The Minister has brought in a number of high-profile people to carry out reviews of RTÉ. I ask her to publish their qualifications. It may be something she would not want to do, but I think the public has a right to know who is going in there and what qualifications they have. We may know some of them and know their qualifications but others will not. I would like her to do that.

When we get into the cut and thrust of all of this, as was said by Deputy Doherty the other day, some of the senior people in RTÉ need to consider their positions. Whether they like it or not, throwing Dee Forbes under the bus is not simply the answer here. Other people were aware of what was going on. Other people signed cheques. They knew what was happening. They might have only known it anecdotally, but we have to get to the bottom of who knew what, when, where and how. I am not sure that we will get those answers in Oireachtas joint committees. While we get some answers at those committees, there tends to be a lack of follow-through on questions. If my time runs out and I am on a particular thread, it is rare for another member of the committee to pick up where I left off and continue on a particular line of questioning. We need a much deeper examination and I ask the Minister to consider that.