Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions Dail Éireann — 2026-05-19 ============================================================ Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central -----in terms of his role. There may be others. What this speaks to is a lack of structure in terms of how people are recruited, designated and treated from a human resource point of view in RTÉ. The wider issue that the bonnet needs to be lifted on is whether there is consistency across the organisation in respect of the treatment of people and the treatment of employees of the company. There is a real disparity in terms of how some are treated compared to how others have been treated, and this is a problem for RTÉ that needs to be sorted out. There needs to be far more transparency than we have experienced in recent years in terms of this issue. In terms of the funding issue, collectively, as an Oireachtas, we need to make up our mind on whether or not we want public service broadcasting and a national broadcaster. These are options that politics can take. We can decide to abandon public service broadcasting altogether and just have a free for all. I do not agree with that but just saying that when Deputy McDonald has a go at the €700 million, there are choices facing the Government. You either cut it down, undermine it, let it go to waste or let it go private. What is the Deputy saying? Is she saying the €700 million should not have gone into it? --- 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/2026-05-19/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:46+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-19