Broadcasting (Amendment) Bill 2026: Second Stage Dail Éireann — 2026-05-28 ============================================================ Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Dún Laoghaire Yes. That is something that was public and where we had some oversight of it. There was some accountability. It went to a private company and then ended up in the hands of vulture funds, and a huge fortune was made in the meantime. There was no transparency around any of that. We had no real control over it or no oversight. That is what is going to happen, in my opinion, slowly but surely to public service broadcasting. This is an example of the requirement to outsource to the independent sector. Who is going to check what the salaries are for the producers in the independent sector? Who is going to ensure there is not bogus self-employment, something we know was an element of what was going on in RTÉ with the disgraceful treatment of workers in there? By and large, however, most people have proper jobs. They paid tax, had pensions and so on. Some people were treated very badly and there was some route to try to resolve that and reclassify people who had been bogusly self-employed. What is happening in the independent sector in terms of employment for workers? What is going to happen is that proper paid jobs for crew in RTÉ are going to be progressively replaced by people in the independent sector. My understanding from talking to people is that the producers, that is, the members of Screen Producers Ireland, SPI, are basically telling people that if they want to work on their productions, whether they are scripted or non-scripted - a lot of the new stuff is going to be in the non-scripted sector - but in either case, these individuals will be told they have to set themselves up as private companies. This is not PAYE employment, so they will not be paying PAYE tax anymore. If they were doing that job in RTÉ and if those productions were being made in-house in RTÉ, they would be paying tax and they would have some job security. Now, once it is in the independent sector and privately owned, who is going to make sure it is not bogus self-employment? From what I hear, it is rampant. Basically, people will not get to work in that sector unless they agree to set themselves up as a private company. Therefore, individuals, whether they are plasterers, riggers or whatever it might be, have to set themselves up as individual private companies, so they are not employees. By the way, as well as getting money it seems from RTÉ, there is another source of money, which is interesting in and of itself. I think it is still going on, and maybe the Minister of State can clarify it. Certainly, a few years ago, about €400,000 or more was being paid by RTÉ to Screen Producers Ireland, which is the representative group of the private companies in the independent audiovisual sector, that is, the producer companies. Why is public money going to run a representative organisation of a series of private companies? I do not understand that. I do not think public money goes to IBEC, does it? I do not think so, unless I missed something. However, it is going to the screen producer equivalent of IBEC - I think that is been going on - which is very pleased about the commitment. I got its document. It is very pleased and very happy with the requirement in this legislation that 25% of all the money of RTÉ is going to go to it as well as the money it gets paid to run its organisation in a situation where nobody has a job in that sector and where workers are fighting to get proper employment because it is gig to gig. We have gone from people having jobs in RTÉ to this and just to reiterate, these are the workers who did not have obscene salaries whose jobs are being replaced. I am absolutely for capping the salaries of the top people in RTÉ; they were obscene. However, it is the jobs of the ordinary people - the crew, the camera operators and all these people - that are going to be replaced with people who will now work gig to gig. They will go from proper jobs into the gig economy. They will be totally vulnerable. Will they get on to the next gig? They not if they complain about the hours. I mentioned a report to the Minister. Screen Guilds of Ireland did a survey, which it never published because the responses of the people who worked in the sector were so bad that it looked bad for the industry. It never published it because it was all about the long hours, poor pay, no career progression, how people were never listened to and how it was understaffed and under-resourced. It was absolutely damning, so it was never published. That was done a couple of years ago. Is this what is going to happen to people who are working in the independent sector where more money is going to go? This is happening simultaneously when section 481, the film tax credit, which was previously for the scripted sector because it contributed to developing an industry and producing stuff in relation to Irish culture, is now going in the independent sector to stuff that does not necessarily do any of those things. I was reading an article a while ago about Gordon Ramsay's cooking show being produced in the independent sector. What does Gordon Ramsay have to do with public service broadcasting? It is Gordon Ramsay or US quiz shows. Is that contributing to Irish culture? Are they going to benefit from tax breaks and money coming in that was supposed to go to public service broadcasting? Is that where this is going? It looks to me like the bits in RTÉ that were making money are being asset-stripped out and decent jobs for ordinary people are now going to be thrown into this private sector where there is no oversight. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-28/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:08+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-28