I was grimly amused by the Tánaiste's accusing others of ideological obsessions in response to an earlier question. Surely the ideological obsession that is most evident is that of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to privatise everything that moves, whether it is selling public land to private developers for housing or the issue I want to raise, public service broadcasting.

It has been about a year since a scandal erupted in RTÉ which centred on the behaviour of a tiny group of people at the top of that organisation, whether presenters or people running the organisation, of malgovernance and obscene salaries. The net result of that scandal, of the bad behaviour of and excessive pay to a tiny group of people, we learn, is the outsourcing and privatisation of the two flagship programmes of RTÉ, "Fair City" and "The Late Late Show", and the loss of hundreds of jobs of ordinary workers who had no hand, act or part in the malgovernance that took place or the obscene salaries enjoyed by a few at the top. The people who will lose out are the technical workers, the costume workers, the makeup workers, staging, editing, camera, scripting and floor managers. These are people on modest salaries, many of whom had to fight for years even to get proper contracts. Some of them are still only on temporary contracts. These are the people who will lose their jobs. Those jobs will be outsourced to the private sector. This is particularly ironic considering that it was the corrosive influence of the commercial sector on shows such as "The Late Late Show" that led people to think they should be paid these obscene salaries in the first place and that produced things such as the barter accounts over business deals with the private sector.

The consequence we now face is that the whole thing - lock, stock and barrel - will be handed over to the commercial, for-profit sector, which is characterised by poor working conditions, lack of pension entitlements and employment insecurity. The workers believe that RTÉ is just stringing along the people who work on "Fair City" and that, in reality, this will be the beginning of the end of "Fair City". Privatisation is the net result of bad behaviour. What the Government should have done, and what it should still do, is stop this privatisation, stop the axing of jobs and fund public service broadcasting properly by imposing a tax on the profits of social media and ICT companies instead of a regressive and failing TV licence funding model, which is completely inadequate. Will the Government intervene in this to protect the jobs of ordinary workers and to safeguard the future of public service broadcasting for our society?

First, I want to make it very clear that there is a fundamental difference between outsourcing and privatisation. Fianna Fáil, by the way, has a very strong record historically of building up State enterprises and did so through various decades-----

It has some record of selling them off as well.

-----particularly during the Seán Lemass era. RTÉ is not for sale. I do not think there is any proposal to put RTÉ on the market-----

Just "Fair City".

And "The Late Late Show".

-----or on the stock exchange. That is privatisation - let us be clear. Deputy Boyd Barrett is like Don Quixote, tilting at windmills. There is no privatisation. RTÉ is not going to be sold. It is not on the market.

To whom is it being outsourced? Private companies.

The Minister and the Government have been clear that they do not want mandatory redundancies. RTÉ has committed to seeking voluntary redundancies. Public funding has increased and the Government will make a decision on the future funding of RTÉ, which has always been part RTÉ licence fee, part Exchequer funding and part commercial revenue. RTÉ has always taken in commercial revenues for many decades, and Deputy Boyd Barrett knows that. That has been a feature of the model. RTÉ now proposes in its latest strategy to increase the level of content produced by the independent production sector. That was signalled in the strategic vision document, which the broadcaster published last November.

Second, it had already been recommended by the Future of Media Commission, which was established to consider the significant challenges facing the wider broadcasting and media sector in light of increasing globalised competition and to make recommendations in order that we could continue to have a sustainable public sector broadcaster and public service content.

Take TG4, for example. The latter has been a very innovative State-owned company and it uses that model quite extensively. It sources almost its entire schedule from the independent sector. We need a balance, although I accept the need for in-house talent to be developed within RTÉ itself. I accept that principle in terms of the skill sets and making sure people have continuing professional development, are retrained and so on. All of that is provided for within the RTÉ strategy. It commits to increasing the amount of RTÉ content that is produced outside of Dublin, for example, which is important and which I welcome in the context of new proposals for Cork and other cities and areas across the country.

Ultimately, RTÉ has to manage its affairs. I do not think the operational management of RTÉ can be undertaken by the Oireachtas or, for that matter, the Government. What the Government does have to do is look at the overall strategic framework, not only in policy terms but also in funding terms. The Government will make its decision on that in the coming weeks.

So the Government washes its hands of the matter. The Government is responsible for not reining in the obscene salaries, which everybody knew about, at the top of RTÉ, whether it was executives or a tiny number of overpaid presenters. Now, however, the people getting it in the neck are the skilled people - the ordinary workers. They are the ones who will lose their jobs and they will go into an independent private sector characterised by the gig economy and project-to-project work. I do not know how many times I have raised the insecurity that workers face in the rest of the audiovisual sector. The producers do very well, but the workers do not know if they have a job from one project to the next. We are going to go away from a situation where people have decent, relatively secure jobs, albeit not all of them because they had to fight and campaign against bogus self-employment and contract work.

What will happen to those contractors? Will they get redundancy payments? No, they will not. Will they have any guarantee of getting work on other programmes? No, they will not. Flagship programmes like "Fair City" and "The Late Late Show" will become more reliant on private advertisers and the commercial sector. This will undermine the fundamental ethos of public service broadcasting.

The Deputy's time is up.

The losses will not stop at 400 jobs. Many of the people we are talking about are ancillary workers who work on "Fair City" and in other areas of RTÉ. Their jobs will be under threat as well.

Please, Deputy.

Will the Government intervene to protect public service broadcasting? Will it ensure there are decent jobs for workers and that they are not the victims of this process? Will public service broadcasting be properly funded by taxing the obscene profits of social media companies?

Social media companies employ thousands of people in this country. The general taxation proposals of the Deputy's party would reduce foreign direct investment in this country to zero. If he got into a position to do so, he would tax the living daylights out of companies. That is his party's policy, which is fair enough. He is entitled to his ideological perspective.

The Tánaiste wants to tax ordinary households. It is a regressive tax.

I did not interrupt Deputy Boyd Barrett, to whom I am responding. He is the leader of his party this morning. Deputy Murphy might be leader next week but it is Deputy Boyd Barrett today.

It is long-standing Government policy to support the independent sector. The Deputies opposite may be against that and against the idea of innovation but it has always been the case that we support the independent sector. I believe in having a strong public service broadcaster. I also believe in supporting public service broadcasting content. Into the future, it will not just be about the public service broadcaster. We should support public service content through a variety of schemes, in the print sector, local radio and national stations, where there is genuine public service content. That is important for democracy.

However, there will be crap conditions for workers.

We have the long-standing Sound and Vision scheme, which is funded through television licence receipts.

The time is up.

New schemes are coming on board to support local democracy by way of court reporting, for example, as recommended by the Future of Media Commission. There is potential to do the right thing and to sustain employment and a decent quality of life for people.