Jason O’Sullivan, principal and founder of J.O.S Solicitors, urges the government to take action in the wake of scrutiny of RTÉ’s employment practices.
The national broadcaster Raidió Teilfís Éireann (RTÉ) continues to face ongoing scrutiny and criticism of its well documented employment practice failings.
The crisis began, to the organisation’s credit, when it commissioned an independent review in 2018 of the employment status of 433 contractors at RTÉ. The aim of the internal review was to determine whether they had been misclassified as self-employed.
The report was conducted by Eversheds Sutherland and found that 106 contractors had “attributes akin to employment”. This lead to 81 of the workers identified being eventually offered full-time contracts with RTÉ, of which 79 were accepted.
The Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection’s Employment Status Investigation Unit (ESIU) commenced its own external probe into the alleged bogus self-employment contracts in late 2020, following Eversheds findings. The scope of the ESIU review is significantly broader than that of Eversheds, dealing with more than 500 employees and the review is ongoing.
In the intervening years, the fallout has led to RTÉ reaching a 1.22m tax settlement with Revenue last year following Revenue’s own audit. Whilst RTÉs Director General Dee Forbes appeared before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) last year. She was forced to spell out the financial woes of the national broadcaster,...
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