I congratulate the Taoiseach on his election to the office he holds. I wish him well for the future. This is my first opportunity to do so. You know you are getting old when the Taoiseach is younger than you.

I will raise a serious matter. As the Taoiseach may be aware, bogus self-employment has been a serious problem affecting workers at RTÉ for a long time. In some cases, it has dragged on for decades for people. Meanwhile, people find themselves in stressful scenarios, such as RTÉ dragging them through lengthy proceedings to have these matters addressed and still some people are not satisfied with their circumstances. The Oireachtas committee on media will meet next week. Individual workers, according to advice from the Office of Parliamentary Legal Advisers, OPLA, will not be allowed to give individual testimonies about their experiences. They will be protesting outside the gate. Will the Taoiseach consider meeting some of these workers to give them a hearing because they feel that they have not been heard? Will he oversee a whole-of-government response to this issue? A number of Departments are involved and the matter has been dragging on for too long without being resolved.

I thank the Deputy for his good wishes.

As he may be aware, in late 2020, the Department of Social Protection commenced an investigation into the PRSI classification of RTÉ's contractors. RTÉ provided the Department with lists of 695 workers who were engaged on a contract basis in 2018, 2019 and 2020 and these form the basis of the investigation. The scale of the investigation in RTÉ is significant and further workers may be brought into the scope of the investigation as it proceeds. It is in the interests of workers, RTÉ and the Department that the investigations are progressed in a timely and efficient manner. In conducting these investigations, a fundamental objective is, first, to ensure workers do not suffer a loss of entitlement to social insurance benefits as a consequence of misclassification and, second, to ensure employers collect and remit the correct amount in social insurance contributions. Where the investigation identifies that this has not been the case, the worker's record is corrected and employers are required to remit the correct value of contributions backdated as appropriate. To date, 138 scope decisions have issued, of which 93 were determined to have an employee status and 45 to be self-employed. I will write to the Deputy with further information on this. I am happy for the Government to engage.