I send solidarity to the workers in RTÉ, who have been balloting and speaking out against the outsourcing at the station and the effective gutting of RTÉ. I agree that the scandal of high wages, hidden accounts and ridiculous pay for a few presenters at RTÉ is being used to gut the public service station. I have loads of issues with RTÉ and will mention some of them but we do need public service broadcasting. There are TDs in this House who are delighted about the whole Tubridy thing because it allows them to have a go at RTÉ. A TD who was speaking as I came in mentioned the lack of plurality in the media in Ireland and said the fact that RTÉ was a public service meant that there was not enough plurality. He was not talking about the lack of working-class voices in the media, the lack of women in the media or the lack of minority representation; he was saying that we need more private media. Based on figures from 2022, RTÉ has a market share in television of 26.75% - it is not a monopoly - while its radio market share is 27.8%. The market in media has been completely opened up and private corporations have moved in and bought large amounts of the media. Virgin Media currently has an 18% share but in radio, for example, Bauer Media controls 25% of all the radio stations in the country. Regional papers face a monopoly, with 15 papers in the Republic owned by Mediaforce, a Danish company. National papers are in a similar situation, with Mediahuis being the biggest player in the market, so the media in Ireland has been swooped in on. The Washington Post was mentioned. It is now owned by Jeff Bezos who owns Amazon and is the second-richest man in the world, below Elon Musk. The Taoiseach spent the day at his company for St. Patrick's Day in the US. We have to put this into the context of the current situation at RTÉ. The workforce in RTÉ is going to be slashed from 1,853 to 1,400. That will have real effects. It will have real effects on the staff members who are left but also on the quality and the nature of programmes that are made. Workers have been highlighting that the fact documentaries are going to be outsourced is a huge attack on the ability to challenge power, to challenge corruption, to challenge institutions, to challenge states and to challenge the Government. These are real life impacts if there is no budget and no legal power in a public service broadcaster to withstand libel threats. Without the resources of RTÉ, creators will not have the ability to take editorial risks that they have had up to now. RTÉ broadcast programmes that challenged the church's power and exposed child sexual abuse. So many issues have been brought to light due to documentaries that were made in that department in RTÉ. Although news cannot necessarily be outsourced, it can be diminished and that has happened in RTÉ. RTÉ's "Upfront with Katie Hannon", one of the current affairs programmes, was just cut from the schedule. There are no longer any RTÉ programmes like "Question and Answers", which was broadcast when I was growing up and allowed members of the public to question politicians face to face. There is nothing like that now at RTÉ. I think "Prime Time" is now the only current affairs programme. The justified anger about RTÉ salaries and bonuses for executives is being used as a smokescreen to gut the national broadcaster. It appears that it has not done anything to stop some of the high salaries. The director general of RTÉ is paid €337,500 for his troubles and the number of people in RTÉ earning over €100,000 has actually increased. The attacks are taking place on people below that, and that has to be pointed out. Obviously, RTÉ has advertising revenue and perhaps it is that reliance on advertising revenue that has seen it has take some shameful editorial stances. RTÉ's coverage of the genocide in Palestine has been appalling. There are so many examples that could be cited of how it has minimised, whitewashed and euphemised what has happened and has been afraid of being seen to be in any way critical, which is bizarre since we are a neutral country. It is not like the BBC, which would be put under a huge political pressure by the British Government, which is a colonial power that is quite supportive of what is going on. Two years into a genocide, RTÉ has never called it a genocide even though the Government calls it a genocide. In one piece in January, there was a headline stating, "Israel says ban on Gaza media access should remain". RTÉ published a piece with no criticism of a press release issued by the Israeli Government about its shameful decision to ban media from Gaza. RTÉ just reprinted it. RTÉ regularly uses the phrase "the Hamas-run health ministry" as a way of undermining figures that might be cited relating to casualties. There are many other examples, including the shameful decision to broadcast the Israel-Ireland match. I call on all workers and all trade unions to boycott that match and I think this pressure is going to build up over the summer. Regarding media mergers, the Bill requires companies to be transparent about their audience measurement system but the main provision is taking decisions on mergers out of the hands of the Minister and passing it over to Coimisiún na Meán. That is a clear attempt by the Government to depoliticise this and divorce itself from any decisions that it will have to make relating to the media, creating yet another third party like the HSE, which was created to take political pressure off the Department of Health, the NCSE, which was created to take pressure off the Department of education, and the NTA, in respect of transport. There is this constant practice of setting up companies and entities and giving them more power and taking political power out of the Government's hands. I question the decision to give funding to Virgin Media despite the fact that it has a huge advertising base. I know it covers current affairs, news and so on, and sometimes does a very good job, but it is a completely for-profit company. There is no legal requirement on Virgin to provide any content or diversity in its output and it frequently resorts to cheap repeats, soaps and so on from other countries. There is a serious concentration of media in the hands of ever fewer people. There are the statistics that I gave about who now controls regional newspapers and the radio stations. There is a move away from public service broadcasting to privatisation and outsourcing and this will lead to a worse RTÉ and a general distilling of public service broadcasting. RTÉ and TG4 should be properly funded. The Government has continuously skirted the issue of funding these bodies. It does not want to increase the television licence fee. Therefore, it will deprive RTÉ of the funding that it needs and force it to let workers go and to outsource. That is not good. It is not good for democracy, it is not good for a challenge to power that we need to have and it is not good for challenging the generally majority privately owned media either. We should call out what is happening here and support the workers who are resisting the destruction of RTÉ as a public broadcaster.

Sentiment score: -0.12