The Government’s decision expected next week to keep the RTÉ licence fee is deeply disappointing, former chairwoman of the RTÉ board Siún Ní Raghallaigh has declared.
Properly funded public broadcasting is a key part of maintaining a healthy democracy in the State, and RTÉ’s current finances are “way off that”, Ms Ní Raghallaigh, who quit her post during the Ryan Tubridy controversy, told the Patrick MacGill Summer School in Glenties, Co Donegal.
The handling of RTÉ's finances by the Government is “at best, political inertia or more likely wilful neglect”, she said. “It is a form of state control of our public service media, not an active control but more an inertia from indecision and failure to grasp the nettle.”
Referring to the Tubridy controversy, she said the crisis put “a focus on the future of public service media but not in a good way” and showed “culture trumps governance”.
The funding battle facing RTÉ has existed “for many years, and successive governments” and remains firmly in a “political stranglehold”, said Ní Raghallaigh, who was critical of the support she received from the Minister for Communications, Catherine Martin.
“We have a household licence fee with an outdated trigger point centred around the ownership of a television set, despite the fact that our public service content is accessible across all platforms,” she told the summer school.
“We have the highest evasion rate in Europe, and the fee is not indexed. In fact, it is the most inequitable tax, with roughly 50 per cent of households actually paying the fee.”
Clearly critical of the way the Cabinet has approached the funding question, Ms Ní Raghallaigh said: “The frequent political mantra is that the funding model must not jeopardise the independence of our public service media.
“RTÉ is funded from licence-fee income. There has been no increase in licence fees since the €2 increase in 2008, and Ireland’s percentage of evasion is the highest in Europe. So RTÉ has, in real terms, suffered a continuous decrease in funding,” she said.
Meanwhile, TG4 is directly funded by the exchequer annually, meaning long-term planning by the Irish-language station is impossible, and there is no certainty about the level of funding, she said.
“We need to leverage what we can to ensure our Irish media is not entirely swamped by global service and by the technology gatekeepers who operate in this State. Without stability, our media system is extremely vulnerable,” she said.
Meanwhile, Prof Brian MacCraith, who chaired the Future of Media Commission between 2020 and 2022, was equally critical of the expected decision to keep the licence fee.
Acknowledging he was speaking in advance of full details of the decision, the former Dublin City University president said it appears the Cabinet will keep the licence fee, that it will remain at €160 and “that you only pay if you have a TV in your home, working or not working”.
“It’ll still be collected by An Post, with no use of the Revenue Commissioners,” he said, though a decision will “remove the uncertainty and multiannual funding will certainly give predictability and allow for proper planning outside the annual budgetary process”.
However, the Future of Media Commission looked at a variety of revenue-raising models across Europe, noting the licence fee system is linked to TVs, charges the poor the same as the rich and has very high evasion rates.
“So, a lot of people are not paying this and it’s not progressive in terms of a financial burden on people and so on, clogging up the courts in terms of chasing people in this,” Prof MacCraith told the summer school.
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