Brendan Griffin (Kerry, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank all of the witnesses, and I appreciate the submissions they have made. I am conscious that they represent many workers at RTÉ. I am also conscious that there are workers who do not feel represented by the unions, and who feel somewhat disenfranchised. If the Chair allows, I will try to give a voice to some of those workers. I had hoped we could have heard directly from some of the people impacted by the bogus self-employment issue. According to advice from the OPLA, that was not possible. However, I want to acknowledge that we had some written submissions accepted in private session and they will become public documents. There are others that will hopefully become public later.

I want to give the committee and the watching public an extract of some of the submissions we have received. The first is from Angie Mezzetti and has been accepted by the committee. She says that bullying in RTÉ has been widespread for decades and that threats not to renew contracts and threats not to grant contracts at all but to have employees work continuously on flat rates without increments or pensions is a form of corporate bullying. She says that the practice has to end and that telling a presenter they are not an employee yet proudly displaying them as a voice or face of RTÉ is a form corporate gaslighting. She says that the human resource practice in RTE of not granting employment rights universally has been an issue, as outlined above. She says that the inability of various unions to secure employee rights for their members has not been exemplary, to say the least, and that the trade unions must be prepared to stand up to management to secure the rights of all in RTÉ, including bogus self-employed and those on zero-hour contracts and not a privileged few. She says that how the proportion of people employed under bogus self-employed was allowed to be so large reflects very poorly on the unions and that estimated bogus self-employment is over 43% and that three quarters of so-called contractors were found to be bogus self-employed. She went on to say that RTÉ, as an organisation, must be subject to compliance with human resources legislation, taxation and social protection law for its own employees and companies it subcontracts to.

Joey Kelly is another person who has made a formal submission.