Broadcasting (Amendment) Bill 2026: Second Stage
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-28
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Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Dún Laoghaire

A Gordon Ramsay cooking show was made a couple of years ago down in Wicklow. Did it benefit from public money? Will the independent sector benefit - because that was made by the independent sector - now that 25% of RTÉ money has to go to these people, the producers? An awful lot of the stuff that is made here is getting section 481 money or Screen Ireland money and now it is going to get RTÉ money. Screen Producers Ireland, which is the representative group of the independent sector, has for quite a number of years been getting hundreds of thousands of euro from RTÉ - private companies. This looks to me like the hollowing-out of public service broadcasting using the excuse of bad governance and bad behaviour by a small group of people at the top. I am against that. I am against throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I am against public service broadcasting, decent quality employment and training and indeed the wider public interest being thrown out because of the bad behaviour of a small group of people, which could have been dealt with by imposing a cap and everybody being placed on salary scales that are transparent. The salary scales and the pay, employment and training conditions of people in the private sector - that independent sector - will not be transparent. Who is going to be checking on them? It will not happen. All that money will just go out and we will have no control whatsoever. It is not benefiting the public, it is not generating public service broadcasting and it is not generating quality employment and training - very much the opposite - so I am very concerned. I believe hundreds of workers in RTÉ are balloting for industrial action because of their concerns about this. Where will the RTÉ orchestra going to live? I could say more.

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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