While I have a minute, I am going to show Members again what a silent phone is. I remind them gently to put their phones on silent. Go raibh míle maith agaibh.
Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Leanann an scannal faoi íocaíochtaí ceilte RTÉ do Ryan Tubridy ar aghaidh. Tá go leor ceisteanna le freagairt go fóill. Tá sé soiléir go dtéann sé seo i bhfad níos faide ná Dee Forbes amháin. Caithfidh go leor daoine ar bhord RTÉ an t-eolas atá acu faoin méid a tharla ag an am sin a chur faoi bhráid an phobail. Níl aon rud níos lú tuillte ag an phobal.
Yesterday, a week since this scandal first broke, RTÉ finally released some selective information about hidden payments to Ryan Tubridy. However, it skirts around the issues at the heart of this fiasco. It leaves more questions than answers. Reading the RTÉ statement, you would be led to believe that Dee Forbes was the only person who knew about this, but that is simply not credible. More than half of the executive board had knowledge of the commercial contract. At a time of pay cuts for workers in RTÉ and in a cost-of-living crisis when people were struggling to pay the annual licence fee, RTÉ created a sweetheart deal to portray falsely that Ryan Tubridy was taking a pay cut and created an elaborate plan to cover it up. All too often, that is how things in this country work for people at the top. RTÉ's top brass knew there was a separate sweetheart deal in place between RTÉ executives and Ryan Tubridy's agent, hidden from the public. This sweetheart deal involved Renault paying Ryan Tubridy €75,000, to be reimbursed by RTÉ through a separate account. Ryan Tubridy was to attend private events at Renault while RTÉ would pick up all the cost.
We now know it was the commercial director who negotiated the side deal with Renault. She was the person who agreed with Ryan Tubridy's agent that the invoices would be paid through the barter account. She organised the payment through the barter account, and none of this would be known if we were just to read the RTÉ statement. The fact is that RTÉ's executives knew the contract was being negotiated. RTÉ's chief financial officer, the director of content and the director of audiences all had some knowledge of these negotiations. Many of them knew about the commercial arrangement between Ryan Tubridy and Renault, bizarrely underwritten by RTÉ. They knew it was in place.
The former director general was responsible – there is no doubt about that – but she was not the only one with knowledge of taxpayers' money being spent without recourse to the board, the Oireachtas, the Minister or the taxpayer. At the heart of it is public money. We have got to get to the bottom of this and do so quickly.
Arising from the board's statement yesterday, we have absolutely no idea about what happened in 2017, 2018 and 2019 in respect of all the extra payments to Ryan Tubridy in those years. We do not know who cleared them, how they were made or what they were about. The RTÉ board has published nothing concerning these payments. If there is to be full transparency, the public needs to know about the payments. It is not acceptable that we are being asked to wait another month for more information to be released. This scandal first came to light a week ago. Therefore, this is not transparency. We need answers now. We need all the documents, all the arrangements, all the signed contracts and all the secret deals and all the side letters from the relevant time period published without delay. If RTÉ does not release all the documents and is not transparent, will the Taoiseach use his powers to request the Minister to use her power under the Broadcasting Act to send in a relevant person so all the information will be available to the public and so there will be full transparency regarding this scandal?
I thank the Deputy for raising this important matter again. The revelations from RTÉ last week are deeply unsettling and have shaken public trust in what is an important institution. We want to see trust restored quickly because we need to have a strong and effective public service broadcaster for our State. It is important once again to acknowledge that the vast majority of staff in RTÉ would have known nothing about this and certainly did not benefit from it in any way. The relevant Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin, wrote to the chairperson of RTÉ to set out her expectation that any statement provided by the deputy director general would answer questions about who signed off on the payments of €75,000 and who else was aware of or involved in them. The Minister also asked for a timeline for the completion of the further Grant Thornton report into the understatement by RTÉ of the additional €120,000 paid between 2017 and 2019. RTÉ has provided an update to the effect that a further Grant Thornton review into the period from 2017 to 2019 will be concluded within four weeks. We do not believe that timeline is satisfactory and have asked that the report be provided more quickly. The Minister is engaging with RTÉ in that regard.
While the RTÉ statement from yesterday sheds some light on what has transpired, many questions remain open, so we expect to see full and open engagement at the Oireachtas committee meetings today and tomorrow. Certainly, we do not believe it is credible that the former director general, Dee Forbes, was the only person with knowledge of the events. The Government and public expect nothing but full and open transparency from RTÉ executives and board members when they attend meetings of committees of these Houses today and tomorrow.
I thank the Taoiseach. There is no doubt that Dee Forbes was not the only person who knew about these events. We can see that from the Grant Thornton report. We know that the commercial director is the person who operated the barter account and negotiated the secret deal with Renault that allowed RTÉ to reimburse Renault and cover all the costs of the Renault events organised with Ryan Tubridy. We know she was the person who authorised for the invoice to be raised by Ryan Tubridy's agent, and we also know she was the person who organised the making of the payment through the barter account. We would not have known any of this from the RTÉ statement. We have to read the grant Thornton report to get it. There are numerous other executives on the board who also had knowledge of this secret deal. This is the problem because at the core of this is the insider culture at the top. It involves the highest-paid people in RTÉ and secret, shady deals and elaborate mechanisms to keep them out of the public eye and away from public scrutiny. The people at the top are looked after and ordinary other workers have to suffer through pay cuts or pay freezes. It is not acceptable.
RTÉ had a chance to disclose all the information but has not done so. The Taoiseach has asked it to fast-track the Grant Thornton report. RTÉ knows where the €120,000 payment in 2017 to 2019 arose from. It discovered it. Does the Taoiseach agree that it should put the information on the record today and not have us wait for days or weeks? The information should be available today.
If RTÉ is not transparent at the committee meetings over the course of today and tomorrow, will the Taoiseach use his power to appoint somebody to go into RTÉ to make the information available to the public?
I thank the Deputy very much for his questions. I acknowledge what he is saying about double standards in RTÉ, with people at the top applying one set of rules to some among them and a different set to others in the organisation. I want to point out two relevant facts of importance.
From the information we have to date, of the top ten or top 20 personalities in RTÉ it appears that only one received a clandestine payment. It is important that we do not cast aspersions on the other nine or ten people who could be described as being at the top of the organisation. It is also important to point out that this matter was exposed by the external auditors hired by RTÉ to look at its own accounts. This is not a whistleblower situation. This is a situation of an external audit actually functioning. It is important to make that point too.
I do not believe four weeks is adequate. The executives at the committee today should explain why it should take four weeks to put this information in the public domain or at least explain why it should take four weeks, because I do not understand that and the Minister does not understand that either. We have made that clear. The proposal of the Government is to establish an external review to look at the governance and culture of the RTÉ organisation. The Minister reserves her position as to whether that will take the form of somebody being appointed to do that or whether she will use those particular powers under the Act to appoint a relevant person.
I have used up all my indulgences in regard to time limits. I call Deputy Bacik.
I felt that was personally directed.
No, not at all.
Despite the publication yesterday of a lengthy statement from RTÉ we still lack clarity on a number of important questions. We have no clarification, for example, as to why the payments made to Ryan Tubridy were consistently understated. We have been asked to believe the incredible allegation, which the Taoiseach said he does not believe to be credible, that out of all the senior management at RTÉ, only Dee Forbes knew the full picture regarding additional payments made. Yesterday, I noted that we are all in the dark, including, it seems, the Government and the Taoiseach, and we are still in the dark today. However, what I want to focus on today are the people who are most hurt by this breach of trust, namely, the workers at RTÉ, the staff and employees who give their all to deliver accurate, impartial information to all of us, because public service broadcasting matters. It matters to us as democrats, as citizens, as taxpayers and as members of a society with a fundamental stake in knowing that a trusted media organisation can provide us with accurate reporting. It matters to the RTÉ employees. The heartbreak was audible in the voices of those who so bravely spoke out at the solidarity protest organised by RTÉ employees yesterday. I offer my own solidarity and that of the Labour Party with all of those employees, with the National Union of Journalists, NUJ, and its representatives in RTÉ, and the workers who spoke so eloquently about their sense of betrayal at the breach of trust. As the Taoiseach said, they spoke about the double standard apparently operating and the fact there appear to be special payments for special people within RTÉ while others languish on bogus self-employment contracts or on poor terms and conditions. As Emma O’Kelly put it, it is unbelievable that someone who was earning €440,000 per year needed to get more money and to get it in secret. Paul Cunningham spoke about how freelancers in RTÉ are paid a pittance, by contrast. They are continually told, “We do not have the money to support you - take it or leave it.”
My first question related to workers' rights is, will the external review focus on the need to ensure equity within RTÉ? Will it focus on an end to special payments for special people, an end to third-party presenter negotiations and a cap on presenters' pay? My second question also relates to workers' rights. It is about the apparently widespread use of bogus self-employment contracts, about which Deputy Nash and Senator Sherlock and I have raised issues for years. Such contracts deprive workers of security, maternity pay, benefits and holiday entitlements. They are simply wrong in an institution, particularly where we see this level of inequity. Will the external review focus on that too? We know now there were repeated attempts by management at RTÉ to block the delivery to trade unions of a report into culture at RTÉ. A report was produced last year with alarming findings, especially on gender discrimination. The report was finally released only after the NUJ went to the information commissioner in regard to multiple requests. I understand none of its important recommendations, including those on gender, have yet been implemented. Will the external review also look at the need to implement the recommendations of that report into culture in RTÉ?
I thank Deputy Bacik. In my view, the people who are perhaps most hurt by all of this are the public, the vast majority of whom dutifully pay their licence fee every year when some people around them do not. Many people who have paid their licence fee every year for ten, 20, 30 or 40 years are extremely annoyed, quite frankly, about what has transpired. I acknowledge, of course, that the general staff in RTÉ feel harmed and hurt by this as well. There are industrial relations issues within RTÉ, as there are within any organisation in the State. With that in mind, the Minister, Deputy Martin, will meet today with the RTÉ trade union group to hear from it and discuss its concerns and thoughts on the best way forward. She will also meet with screenwriters and screen producers because they too are affected by this as people who do not work for RTÉ but receive a lot of contracts from RTÉ for the work they do.
We have not finalised the terms of reference for the external review just yet. It will focus on culture and governance. We will take into consideration whether the gender aspect of that should be considered. I know that the Minister, Deputy Martin, has a strong interest in gender equality and has promoted it in her role. We will also give consideration to a recommendation of the media commission that pay in RTÉ should be compared with pay in other member organisations of the European Broadcasting Union, EBU. We do not know what might come out of that. We do not know how pay of the main personalities in RTÉ compares internationally with other EBU members. We do not know how the pay of the general staff in RTÉ compares with other EBU members. However, it may be appropriate now to bring forward that recommendation of the media commission and see how pay in RTÉ stands relative to other public service broadcasters in countries of a similar size.
In regard to alleged bogus self-employment, the Department of Social Protection has a scope section within it. It carries out investigations into whether somebody is self-employed and encourages anyone who feels they are being bogusly classified as self-employed to contact the Department of Social Protection with any information they have.
I thank the Taoiseach for the response. He is right, of course. Members of the public are very hurt by this. We all hear this across our constituencies. However, the direct impact on those who work within RTÉ cannot be overestimated. We heard that yesterday from those who spoke out, who believe passionately, as we all do, in the importance of public service broadcasting. I thank the Taoiseach for pointing out that the Minister, Deputy Martin, will meet the trade union group today. That is welcome. However, I urge the Taoiseach and the Minister, Deputy Martin, to ensure the terms of the review include those issues I raised relating to workers' rights. It is essential. It is simply not enough for those employees who believe they may be on bogus contracts to themselves have to go to the Department about it. That is simply not a reality for those who feel vulnerable. Again, yesterday, at the NUJ protest, we heard from Trevor Keegan, a so-called "evershed" employee, one of those who had to fight tooth and nail for decent conditions. The Revenue Commissioners were on to him, telling him he was staff and that RTÉ should pay PRSI. It took years to resolve that issue. This is a serious issue. It contributes to the sense of betrayal felt by those within RTÉ. It also contributes to that sense of immense inequity that ten presenters might be so-called talent, rather than the vast bulk of the staff in RTÉ who are doing their best. I urge the Taoiseach to include workers' rights and give them priority within the terms of the review.
We will certainly give that consideration. As I said, the terms of reference have yet to be agreed by the Government. The more that is included in the terms of reference of any review, the longer the review will take. As I have also said, it is better to do it properly and thoroughly than to do it quickly and not well. Regarding self-employment, which is an area I know well from my roles in the Department of Social Protection, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and having been an employee, an office holder and self-employed at various periods in my life, this is not always a straightforward issue. Bear in mind that the vast majority of the talent in RTÉ are actually self-employed. Even though they get no pensions or redundancy rights, it suits them to be self-employed for other reasons. We often need to tease that out with people as to the benefits and disbenefits of being self-employed.
It is no secret that children's disability services are at breaking point. However, the sheer scale of the problem is shocking when you learn that almost 800 vacancies exist in children's therapy services across the HSE's primary care services and children's disability network teams.
Those 800 vacancies exist across physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy and psychology, with over 550 vacancies in the children's disability network teams and over 440 vacancies in the primary care services. This means that not alone are children enduring waiting lists for services, but they are also facing inordinate waits for assessment.
On his return to office, the Taoiseach told the Dáil that: "Our vision is to make Ireland the best country in Europe to be a child." Unfortunately, the reality is that unless drastic action is taken, that statement simply will not apply to children with a disability. I will give one example. John, who is non-verbal, has just completed junior infants and in the almost five months since he was diagnosed, not alone has he not received any form of service or speech therapy, but his family have not even been assigned a key contact. They have been informed that the children's disability network team assigned to him can "only facilitate critical clinical needs as they arise". How can anyone stand over a situation like this?
It goes further, because on top of this, we have an eircode injustice. The service a child receives is not based on disability, but on eircode. While the number of therapy hours provided by the children's disability network team covering south Roscommon increased by 55% in 2022, the number of such hours provided by the corresponding team for north Roscommon decreased by 26% in the same period, providing over a thousand hours less than its counterpart. We need to look urgently at the issues surrounding training, recruitment and retention, not just in terms of future needs, but also the needs of thousands of children today, who are currently deteriorating on waiting lists across this country.
I accept that there are difficulties with recruitment, but that is why we need to take a more flexible approach in our recruitment and retention of therapists. Across the children's disability network teams, almost 100 vacancies are unfilled because staff are on maternity leave. These are vacancies that did not arise without significant notice, yet it appears maternity leave cover remains unrecognised and unfunded within our disability services and across our health services. It is not custom and practice to backfill these vacancies. This has to stop.
I thank Deputy Naughten for raising this important issue, and I know it is one that we will all be familiar with in our constituencies, where parents come to us and tell us about the challenges they have in securing necessary assessments and treatment for their children. We are committed to finding and implementing real and tangible solutions to enhance services to meet properly the needs of children with additional special needs.
As we all know, children with complex special needs access therapy services through the children's disability network teams, CDNTs. There are enormous challenges in meeting demand for these services and I know this affects children and their families very adversely. Waiting lists for services are being driven mainly by a shortage of suitably qualified therapy professionals to staff the CDNTs, the management referrals, and the slow uptake of new technologies. Funding for over 600 full-time additional posts has been provided by this Government to enhance the capacity of CDNTs and to shorten waiting times. These additional posts are evidence of the Government's commitment to prioritising interventions for children with complex needs, as well as those in special schools. A targeted recruitment campaign has been developed. It will be launched next week for the remainder of the vacant senior therapy grades within the CDNTs across the country.
The HSE is seized of the importance of early engagement with the health and social care profession graduates coming out this year. All of the class of 2023 have been offered the opportunity to apply for employment through national campaigns. Interviews have taken place and recruitment panels prepared. Permanent job offers will be issued prior to their professional registration. By the end of next year, the HSE has targeted the recruitment of 550 professionals for children's disability services. We expect them to be made up of 260 graduates, 111 international recruits and 182 from a sponsorship programme.
How about offering part-time contracts that may suit therapists who are currently taking career breaks, in many instances for family reasons? I have spoken to several therapists who had actively considered taking up employment for a set number of hours per week, including evenings and weekends, enabling them to maintain their skills. Evening and weekend appointments would also assist families where parents are working and result in fewer hours lost for children. Many of these services are located alongside GP out-of-hours services, so the buildings are already open. We are now seeing health services like endoscopy providing out-of-hours appointments, so why not do the same for children whose potential is being wasted on waiting lists today? By delivering services innovatively, we could make it easier to recruit therapists, while also addressing the waiting lists and making a real difference to children like John.
I thank the Deputy for his suggestion and I will certainly ask the CEO of the HSE and the Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, to examine that. Certainly, the Government has no principled objection to part-time contracts. We issue them all the time across the public service. It does not always result in a net increase in the number of people working in these roles, because once offered, some full-time people go part-time, so there can be gains and losses on that. It is certainly something we are willing to consider, as is the use of out-of-hours buildings and facilities where there is space available. That makes sense to me and I think a lot of parents would welcome the convenience of being able to take their kids to an appointment in the evening when they are finished their own work. That is a good idea too.
I agree that the solution to a lot of these problems that we face with recruitment and retention in our health service, and other areas of the public service and private sector, is going to be innovation. It is simply the case that in the world whole, there are more vacancies for these skilled positions than there are people qualified to do them, and we have to embrace new technologies and new ways of doing things. A lot of things are being developed, particularly online and virtually, that can make a huge difference. It might not be appropriate for a first consultation, but for repeat consultations and so on it can make a huge difference too.
I know many young people across the country are anxious to get their hands on the much sought-after Taylor Swift tickets that will be released in the next few weeks. I hope that the extra measures taken by Ticketmaster are successful in stamping out ticket touts, and that tickets will go to actual fans who have waited a long time to see her live.
The power of live music cannot be overstated, and it is something that I think is often overlooked. Studies have shown that people who regularly experience live music boost their creativity and cognitive abilities, reduce their stress hormone levels, while increasing the production of endorphins, dopamine and oxytocin, and experience consistent social cohesion.
This social connection is more important now than ever in the wake of Covid-19. Considering that many young music fans missed out on two years of opportunities to experience live events, we need to ensure that they are now given the chance to experience this sense of community and connection that comes from live music, which can be hard to find in our technology-driven world, and that this experience is accessible to everyone equally.
Unfortunately, the greed of some in this country has made the experience of live events inaccessible for many of our citizens. While many young people’s anxieties are focused on obtaining tickets, the anxieties of many parents are focused on affording accommodation. From looking at Booking.com this morning, there is not a single hotel room available in Dublin for under €350 for either of the nights of the Taylor Swift concerts, and they are on next year. As if that is not expensive enough, we have, in recent days, seen rampant price gouging by Dublin hotels, some raising the price of a room from €359 to an incredible €999 for the night of the concert. This is before the tickets have even been released. Last weekend, the Minister for Transport, Deputy Eamon Ryan, described this as shocking, but what has he done about it?
It is not just hotels that are guilty of price gouging. One landlord has a two-bedroom Dublin apartment priced at €20,000 for the same weekend. How is this accessible for my constituents in Donegal, who are undoubtedly the most affected by this disgraceful display of greed because of their distance from the capital? I am highlighting the Taylor Swift concerts in particular because we know that she has a lot of young fans who cannot travel independently, and who will require adult supervision, but sadly this is not new or unique. Price gouging has been an issue with almost every live event that has taken place in recent years, from concerts to Ireland games to GAA finals.
This issue has affected fans of all genres of music and fans of all types and levels of sport, but it is rural fans who are affected most.
It is yet again another example of the immense greed and selfishness that has taken hold in this country, which is completely unacceptable and unscrupulous during this cost of living crisis. This is an accessibility issue that yet again affects my constituents more than others. What is the Government going to do about it?
I acknowledge the basic point the Deputy started off with, which was how important social connections are. In this very online and digital age, it is still all the more important that we meet each other, see other people, meet, embrace, shake hands and have shared experiences whether that is attending matches, concerts, agricultural shows and other events over the summer. Those things are really important for people's sense of community and mental health.
They do not always have to be paid for and they do not always require tickets. Many events I attended in the past week or two were free, often funded by Government and local authorities. At the weekend, I attended Street Feast in Dublin 8. It happened all over Dublin city - 400 places around the country - where people were encouraged to have a street party on their own street. An Garda Síochána closed off the street and residents organised small events. It was a great chance for people to meet neighbours, something we do not do in the same way as we used to in the past. I attended the Castleknock Festival, which was a similar event with no charge unless you took part in the 5 km run, which I did not. The same was true of Blanchardstown so there are a lot of really good events. It is not always about having to buy a ticket for something but I get the point that people want to attend the big concerts and the big matches, as do I, and that this can affect people if they have to travel outside their area to stay in hotels or something like an Airbnb property.
We have a dilemma here, which the Deputy understands. We do not have enough hotels in the city of Dublin but we do not particularly want a huge number of new hotels to be built because one of the biggest challenges we are facing is the housing crisis and rather than more hotels and Airbnb properties we want fewer new hotels being built, fewer Airbnb properties, more construction going into housing and more Airbnb properties and short-term lets being moved into housing. We must always bear in mind the mental impact of the housing crisis as opposed to the other one described by the Deputy.
I have spoken to hoteliers about this. They have their story to tell and their story is that the coverage in the media has been unfair and that if you try to book a hotel more than one year ahead, you get the rack rate. It is not necessarily the rate they charge and they wanted that point to be made so I have made it. I made the point very strongly to them that price gouging, taking advantage of people and hiking prices on very popular weekends is bad business. It is how your business gets a bad reputation, how your city or town gets a bad reputation and how your wider industry gets a bad reputation. It does not make good business sense in the long term. We saw what happened previously when Dublin in particular but Ireland in general got a reputation for being a very high-cost place to visit. I hope hoteliers will take that point on board.
So the Taoiseach’s response is basically to appeal to the good nature of the people who are already racking these prices on people. That is a sad response. Surely the Government has to take some action at some point. The Taoiseach said getting a reputation for price gouging is bad for society and the economy as a whole. Of course it is but the Government can prevent it from happening. It can tell hoteliers that it will take action and stop them from doing this and implement it instead of just chatting nicely to them and putting their arguments across here on the floor of the House so their arguments can be heard, which I believe is nonsensical. I have heard them make that argument on the radio. Every citizen can hear them make those arguments but that does not change anything. Nothing ever changes. Based on the Government's point of view, it seems that nothing will change because the Taoiseach is going to stand there and say there are loads of free events around the country and people can go to them and if they go to concerts, they are going to have to suck it up and put up with it because the Government is going to talk nicely to the hoteliers, see if they will reduce their prices and when they do not, do nothing about it. That is a sad reflection.
I appreciate that it is an important issue but the Deputy did not put forward a proposal or action the Government should take. In fairness, Deputy Naughten did with regard to his question on disability services as did Deputy Bacik regarding her question on RTÉ. Deputy Pringle has not put forward a solution. The Deputy has been very critical of the Government, hoteliers and everyone and of me personally but he did not put forward a constructive solution so if he has one, he should put it forward and we will give it consideration. It is not a joke. It is a serious request and suggestion.
Sure.