Long after they leave office, RTÉ still looms large in the imagination of former ministers. Speaking as the secret payments crisis broke last week, one former cabinet minister spoke of still getting the heebie-jeebies when they pass Montrose, worried that “Mary Wilson might grab me by the scruff of the neck and ask me to account for whether I was drinking pints at the weekend”.
RTÉ has found itself at the centre of an unprecedented homespun drama, in a spiral of which it is struggling to pull itself out. The path ahead will be refracted through the broadcaster’s taut relationship with the political system – the first proper engagement being committee appearances on Wednesday and Thursday.
With RTÉ gasping for air, much will be determined by politics, and the starting position is not a good one. “There’s no proper relationship between Government and RTÉ,” says one mandarin. “Nobody in Government or the Dáil has a good word to say about them.” That might be a stretch – but certainly, when it comes to the relationship between RTÉ and the Government of the day, there is a lot of scar tissue.
Theorising as to why political relations with the broadcaster are supposedly poor is a parlour game for the chattering classes: does Fine Gael still hate RTÉ for a drama on the hepatitis C scandal, which aired as Michael Noonan, who oversaw the State’s response as minister for health, prepared for the 2002 general election? Or for coverage of the water charges protests?
Some are adamant that RTÉ was soft on Labour, sympathetic to a liberal metropolitan outlook. One ex-insider still fumes over Ryan Tubridy’s coverage of the Home Sweet Home takeover of Apollo House in 2016 (“that totally f**ked off the entire cabinet”); others rail against cutbacks in regional coverage that make it harder for politicians outside Dublin to get national play for constituency issues.
Everything is potential grist to the mill, down to occasions when the broadcaster would apparently send three taxis to ferry TDs from Leinster House to Montrose for the Late Debate programme, seen by some as emblematic of a culture of profligacy. Central to all this is what one former minister calls RTÉ’s “single transferable whinge” about licence fee reform. The full-court press on licence fee reform, often playing out in public with dire warnings issued by ex-director general Dee Forbes and former chairwoman Moya Doherty, enraged the political system, who felt they were being strong-armed. There was a theory among some in the last government that RTÉ board members were specifically tasked to hustle cabinet ministers at diary engagements.
[ RTÉ fails to quell political disquiet over Tubridy payOpens in new window ]
Those on the receiving end of their lobbying felt they could have a tin ear, including failing to understand the Government’s position on things like hiving off licence fee collection to the Revenue Commissioners - a campaign they fought and lost quite publicly without ever winning over the Department of Finance.
RTÉ is no ordinary entity: it is visible in the lives of normal people, as well as within the beltway of Irish politics, in a way that other commercial semi-States simply are not
Underlying this sometimes overwrought contemplation of RTÉ by politicians, and vice versa, is the fact that a sort of co-dependent relationship exists between politics and the national broadcaster – both need the other for their own purposes, they know it, and it chafes.
So, where to from here? The good news – such as it is – for the broadcaster is that in the early part of this week there did not appear to be an immediate rush from the top of Government for a rapid changing of the guard. Tuesday’s statement from RTÉ was being seen by senior Government sources as “an opportunity to settle things in the short term... anger is never a good policy”. If a floor could be established to the crisis, then a way back can begin to be imagined. The Taoiseach and Tánaiste urged executives to come clean; underlying their admonishments of RTÉ is a desire to grasp the contours of the crisis. Hence why a governance review has been commissioned, why the Taoiseach is still voicing confidence in the board, why the criticism of individuals from those at the top of Government is caveated – and why Government was loudly insisting on full disclosure.
However, just because there may ultimately be a way through the woods doesn’t mean RTÉ is out of them yet. Even if progress is made, life will remain profoundly uncomfortable for RTÉ. Ministers will po-facedly pronounce on the seriousness of what has transpired and expound solemnly on their disappointment. The committee system will be let off the leash, with backbenchers eager to extract their own retribution after being misled. A high price should be extracted – the existence of a deal like that afforded to Ryan Tubridy is a mandate to overhaul the culture and standards of an organisation from which such an arrangement can emerge.
[ Miriam Lord: Tubsgate has Mattie McGrath reaching new heights of incoherenceOpens in new window ]
RTÉ is no ordinary entity: it is visible in the lives of normal people, as well as within the beltway of Irish politics, in a way that other commercial semi-States simply are not. It is sprawling and needs constant care and attention. Its day-to-day operations cannot be paused for everyone to gather breath. Anyone contemplating a cull of top executives and board members would ultimately have to face the prospect of further destabilising the broadcaster, giving rise to unpredictable consequences.
While more heads may yet roll, the Government may be minded to seek reasons not to do that. In that context, both parties will probably recognise at some point that they share an interest in establishing a base level of trust and a credible commitment to common objectives, against a historical backdrop where those things have often been in short supply.
Jack Horgan-Jones is a political reporter at The Irish Times