I send my best wishes to my party leader, Deputy Mary Lou McDonald, as she recovers from her surgery.

Tá an pobal míthreorach agus ligthe síos go dona mar gheall ar an scéal faoi íocaíochtaí breise RTÉ do Ryan Tubridy. Caithfidh trédhearcacht agus cuntasacht a bheith ann. Tá muinín an phobail in RTÉ iontach lag agus tá ceisteanna bunúsacha le freagairt go fóill ag RTÉ. The hidden payments scandal uncovered at RTÉ is shocking. Trust must be at the very heart of our public broadcaster. For the public to have confidence in the information RTÉ shares, the truth should be fundamental and non-negotiable, yet that trust now lies in tatters. The recent revelations are an example of a cosy consensus, an insider culture, that has existed in this State for far too long. While many workers, including at RTÉ, work hard day in, day out on ordinary salaries, it is a very different story for those at the top. Journalists on low pay have been locked into trade union disputes, fighting hard for fair pay and conditions. They and their trade union representatives were told by RTÉ's top brass time and time again that there was simply no more money. They and the public were told the top presenters were taking big pay cuts, doing their bit to bear the brunt of the public funding squeeze. Now it has emerged that the money was there all along, just hidden in shady deals that prevented the truth from being known and that ensured those at the top were taken care of without anybody else knowing about it.

Many viewers and RTÉ journalists are wondering how they will be able to trust RTÉ's top executives again. The astonishing web of payments would be appalling in any private company, but is even more astounding when we are dealing with a public sector organisation.

RTÉ and all other public bodies have a responsibility to spend public money in a way that is responsible, fair and transparent. They are accountable to the taxpayer and must act accordingly. The revelations of last week show a total disregard for how public money was spent. People who struggle to pay their annual licence fee at a time of a cost-of-living crisis, and who face significant penalties if they do not pay it, are rightly disgusted by what we have seen and learned over the past week. It is totally unacceptable that in a publicly funded body there would be such disparities in pay, where the well-connected few are on sky-high wages and many ordinary workers are struggling on low and average pay. A culture of secrecy hid this fact. People need to have confidence that RTÉ's top executives are acting with honesty and integrity. That is not asking for much. It should be the bare minimum in any publicly funded body.

Many questions remain to be answered. This cannot be kicked down the road to another inquiry that might takes months or even a year to shed light on the situation. We heard today that the former director general, Dee Forbes, is refusing to come before the Committee of Public Accounts and another committee of the Houses. She has appeared before the Committee of Public Accounts before. In January 2020, she categorically told it that the remuneration of high earners at RTÉ had been cut by 15%. She categorically misled that committee, misled these Houses and misled the public, and she has a responsibility as the former director general of RTÉ to release information into the public domain and to correct the record as soon as possible when she is able to do that.

RTÉ says that it is releasing information about this scandal, but it has made it clear that it is refusing to put any information about the 2017, 2018 and 2019 payments to Ryan Tubridy into the public domain at this time. That is simply not good enough.

We are a week on from the scandal and we are still being drip-fed information. The Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media has met the chair of RTÉ. Has she asked her about the payments for the period 2017 to 2019? Have the Minister and the rest of the Cabinet been briefed on it? Will the Taoiseach ask the Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin, to instruct the board to put all of the information covering all of the periods into the public domain today?

Thanks very much, Deputy. At the outset, I want to express my best wishes to Deputy McDonald, who is currently recovering from surgery. I hope that she makes a very swift recovery and will be back in action as soon as possible and as soon as she is well again.

The revelations from RTÉ last week are deeply unsettling and they have shaken public trust in what is an important institution. We want to see trust restored quickly because we need a strong public service broadcaster for our State. It is important to acknowledge, as Deputy Doherty did, that the vast majority of staff in RTÉ would have known nothing about this and certainly did not benefit from it in any way. It is important that we put that fact on the record.

As far as we know, at least so far, the issue of hidden fees relates to only one RTÉ personality, not to any of the others. That is now being confirmed at the moment, but it is important that we are fair and do not cast aspersions on people who actually took pay cuts and did not receive hidden fees. That appears to be the case, but it has to be subject to confirmation.

Regarding the former director general, Dee Forbes, I agree that she should appear before a committee. The fact that she is no longer the director general does not mean that she cannot. I believe it is appropriate that she should tell her side of the story and give us her version of events. That has been done to an extent in a statement, but I think people would like to ask more questions and interrogate that statement somewhat.

There will be a further statement from the board, issuing more detail, at 3 p.m. today. The Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin, has secured that commitment from the chairperson of the board. Grant Thornton is examining the issue of the payments made between 2017 and 2019. We will have that information once it is available, but that was prior to the period of this board's office. We will get that information out into the public domain once we have it.

The Government has initiated a thorough review of the governance of RTÉ and the Minister briefed the Cabinet on that this morning. The Minister also wrote to the chairperson of the board, Siún Ní Raghallaigh, and the deputy director general, Adrian Lynch, yesterday setting out our expectation as a Government that the relevant members of the board, the executive and all relevant senior staff should attend and engage fully with Oireachtas committees examining these matters and with the independent review.

We expect nothing but full and open discussions and answers from RTÉ. The public and those who work in RTÉ who had no knowledge or involvement in this deserve nothing less. The chairperson of RTÉ confirmed this morning to the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Deputy Martin, that the executive board is finalising a statement for issue today at 3 p.m. which I understand will set out what happened in greater detail and from the perspective of the executive, detailing the timeline of when decisions were made, explaining how these types of payments are handled, and who had responsibility and awareness in these discussions.

RTÉ in very many ways plays a very important role in our society with its Irish language broadcasting, children's programmes, drama, sport, good quality news, documentaries, election coverage and the provision of important public information including, for example, during the pandemic, and we need to be cognisant of that. If things were done that were wrong, and I believe things that were done were wrong, that needs to stop. It needs to change and people need to be held to account, but the institution needs to be restored and to survive.

We are a week on and we still do not have full transparency, and even after the board releases its statement, we will not have it. How do I know that? The board is saying that it is not going to put any information into the public domain in relation to the €120,000 of additional payments that Ryan Tubridy received from 2017 to 2019. We should not need a Grant Thornton review. That can be independent but we should be able to hear from senior executives at RTÉ how this came about, who sanctioned it, who approved of it, why it was kept secret and why the public and the Oireachtas were misled.

The Taoiseach, through the Minister, has the power under section 109 of the Broadcasting Act to appoint a person into RTÉ to review those records and bring that information to light. It is not acceptable that two committees of this House, one sitting tomorrow and the other sitting on Thursday, may not have information in relation to any of the transactions from 2017 to 2019. The Taoiseach has called for full transparency but is he calling for it today? Should the executives of RTÉ be releasing into the public domain their knowledge of what transpired in relation to the payments from 2017 to 2019, which they said yesterday they are refusing to do so at this time?

We need full transparency on all of these matters as soon as is possible because we cannot have accountability until we have transparency and truth. There will be a further statement issued by the board at 3 p.m. today and board members and executive members will come before committees of this Oireachtas tomorrow and the day after. That will be the opportunity to ask them questions and to press them further. I do not know exactly why it is the case that we do not have more detail on the payments between 2017 and 2019. I will endeavour to find out more information on that today. I know there is an inquiry going on in relation to that and we will get that information. I am not entirely sure why we cannot get it today as opposed to in a few days' time or next week, but I will certainly follow up on that, as will the Minister.

Just on a point of correction, Deputy Doherty, I do not think the Committee of Public Accounts sat in January 2020. You might just check the record on that because the Dáil had been dissolved. Just be careful in relation to dates.

It was 2022, sorry.

It is now six days since we first learned the bombshell news of RTÉ's secret payments to Ryan Tubridy. Incredibly, we are still waiting to find out the most basic information. For instance, we do not know how the entire €345,000 in excess payments was made to Mr. Tubridy. How is that still the case? How can the national broadcaster, which is in receipt of €200 million in State funding annually, not know how it funded secret payments to its highest earner? RTÉ has been aware of this issue since March, three months ago. How many accounts is it sifting through, looking for these payments? Are its accounts really that convoluted? The whole thing just seems extraordinary.

The drip feed of information from RTÉ has been so bad that The Sunday Times got the scoop before the RTÉ news team on how payments were made. The Sunday Times described how Mr. Tubridy's agent was instructed to send a British media company, Astus, invoices which were labelled as consultancy services. There was also an explicit instruction to anonymise the transaction so that Mr. Tubridy's name did not appear anywhere in the paperwork. Astus then settled those invoices at a cost to RTÉ of more than €230,000, comprising €150,000 for Mr. Tubridy and more than €80,000 in fees. In order to pay Mr. Tubridy €150,000, RTÉ chose to do so in a way that cost it an additional €80,000.

No wonder the organisation is a financial basket case if that is how it goes about its business. The convoluted manner in which these payments were made and the fact they did not appear in Mr. Tubridy's published salary make it clear the entire objective here was concealment. Whatever way you want to spin it, this was a deliberate ploy expressly designed to mask the real income of RTÉ's top earner. Meanwhile, Dee Forbes, in her statement yesterday, stated the object of the exercise was to achieve cost saving. Why, however, was a commercial partner tapped to pay some of the salary of Mr. Tubridy, out of all RTÉ's top earners? Is it so the board could pretend it remained below €500,000 when it published its figures? That is not to mention the whole issue of RTÉ underwriting guarantees it never thought it would have to pay. You would have to question whether it learned anything from the financial crisis.

The Taoiseach stated yesterday that he had confidence in the board, which seems odd when none of us yet know the full facts of this situation. Will he clarify whether he has confidence in the executive board? Does he have any idea when we will learn how the €120,000 payment between 2017 and 2019 was made and if significant fees were associated with that? When will we have all the details of this hugely damaging affair?

I am somebody who believes you do not make judgments about things or people until you know the facts. It is a basic principle of justice that people are innocent and should be afforded the principle that they are innocent before they are found guilty. It is on that basis that I say I have confidence in the board and that I have confidence in the remaining members of the executive. Obviously, if new facts emerge of which we are not aware, that changes things, but I do not think it is right in a democracy or from a basic decency perspective to express a lack of confidence in somebody before you know the facts and before you know whether they have done anything wrong. I would not like that approach from any of my Ministers, quite frankly. That is the answer to the Deputy's question in that regard.

There will be a opportunity to question executives and board members. They will be coming before committees tomorrow and the day after and there will be a good opportunity for Members to ask their questions and seek answers and I expect that to be done. In addition to that, there will be a further statement from the board at 3 p.m. today, citing more details, and Grant Thornton is doing ongoing work in respect of the ten best paid RTÉ personalities to confirm there were no secret or concealed payments made to them and to establish the facts around the payments that were made between 2017 and 2019. I do not have those facts yet but I want to see them as soon as they are available.

The organisation was aware of this for three months but it has yet to explain how money was paid between 2017 and 2019. That is where the questions arise. It gives me no pleasure to stand here and criticise RTÉ. It is an organisation that has been responsible for excellent public service broadcasting. The vast majority of its staff are modestly paid and work incredibly hard but this saga has tainted the organisation. Trust with the public and its staff has been shattered, the Government and the Opposition have been misled and incorrect information about salaries was knowingly published and we still do not know why. We do not even know how the payments were made. If RTÉ wants to recover from this, it must be transparent and there must be accountability. This must happen quickly. We are a week into this now. RTÉ has known for three months. The longer it takes for the detail to emerge, the more damaging it will be. All of those centrally involved, including Dee Forbes, must appear at the Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport and Media and the Committee of Public Accounts to answer questions about what they knew.

We have yet to see the board's statement that will be published this afternoon. Has the Taoiseach or the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Deputy Martin, had sight of that statement? When can we expect to see the terms of reference for the Minister's review of culture and governance in RTÉ?

I have not seen the statement as yet. I understand it will be released at approximately 3 p.m. today. I do not know what its contents are. As regards the terms of reference, the Minister, Deputy Martin, has draft terms of reference, focusing on both the governance and the culture of the RTÉ organisation. We hope to sign off on those terms of reference later in the week - that would be the intention - and then to have the independent inquiry or review up and running as soon as possible.