Alongside the spiralling RTÉ controversy that kicked off a little over a year ago, the thorny question of what to do about the future of the broadcaster has been a less flashy but substantially more important issue.
The drama sustained the news media over last summer and consumed much public attention; it was that rare beast – a story in the public interest that was of interest to the public. The sorry tale of the flop Toy Show musical and lurid tales of flip flops, barter accounts, hospitality junkets, nosediving licence fee income, stars in cars, committee meetings, exit packages and overflowing staff anger added spice to the Ryan Tubridy saga. It precipitated a wholesale changing of the guard in Montrose at executive and board level, and an overhaul of the station’s corporate governance. The RTÉ chair and the arts Minister Catherine Martin had a very public war, culminating in the chair’s early resignation.
However, alongside the seemingly bottomless scandal at the broadcaster was the dark financial cloud looming over it. The debate on the future funding of RTÉ predated the scandal – successive RTÉ chairs and directors general had agitated for reform, for more State funding, in a way that irked Ministers no end. But the controversy crystallised things. The Government had left a recommendation by the future of media commission to fund the broadcaster from the exchequer on the shelf – pointedly, the only recommendation it ignored from the commission’s report. The issue could no longer be ignored.
Last summer RTÉ was signalling it had cash reserves, meaning it didn’t have to do an immediate rake of cuts, but that investment was going to be hurt as decisions had to be made with limited resources. By September, RTÉ executives told the Oireachtas that it was facing a €28 million deficit driven by a drop in licence fee income and that it would have to cut back on spending. More money came in the budget – conditional on further reforms – but this was always a sticking plaster while the system grappled with what to do next.
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And yet, the political system was unable to alight on a formula. Last November Martin pointedly put the option of direct exchequer funding back in the spotlight, saying that everything was “on the table”, while giving an ironclad commitment to making a decision and succeeding where consecutive governments have “failed ... in grasping this nettle”.
However, the whiff of a direct funding relationship between the exchequer and the broadcaster prompted a backlash from both the Green Party’s Coalition partners, especially then minister for finance Michael McGrath, the Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe, and Fianna Fáil leader Michaél Martin. Leo Varadkar as taoiseach let it be known that he had no serious objections to a State-funded model. Simon Harris, once he was in the Taoiseach’s office, was more gnomic, but signalled openness to a mix of exchequer funding and an ongoing licence fee on Thursday.
On and on the saga went. Two Government commissioned reports were needed before a decision on funding could be made, but even when they dropped in May, the backchanneling dragged on for weeks. In early May it was reported that options were narrowing towards a “hybrid” model, merging the existing licence fee with multiannual exchequer funding. Martin went on the offensive, saying it risked being “the worst of both worlds” and that she hadn’t been briefed on such a proposal – backed by her then-leader Eamon Ryan. In the end, it seems the decision is for something like that. On this call, the finance ministers and Micheál Martin seem to have prevailed, but Martin will trumpet the multiannual funding – something no other State body has, freeing RTÉ from the tendrils of the annual budgetary process. “That has never been conceded before,” said one senior source on Thursday.
Sources involved in discussions say the options narrowed considerably at last week’s meeting of Coalition leaders, and the exchequer funding model was substantially off the table from that point. The publication of the summer economic statement and the hot competition expected for money available for new measures, made allocating vast sums to backstop RTÉ directly a non-runner. Martin, in the words of one participant, couldn’t “look for a big chunk of that for one part of her department”.
If a political deal has been done, there are still unknowns: who will collect the fee; will it be at a household level, opening the door to a more broad levying of the charge, or still dependent on the increasingly outdated model of the charge following TV ownership? Will the charge come down? How many years will the multiannual funding cycle cover? What will the broadcaster’s own assessment be of its sufficiency? How will it feed into painful cost-cutting at RTÉ?
On Thursday Harris said the saga “has gone on for far too long”. He said: “It’s important that we bring finality to the question of how we fund public service broadcasting.”
This may prove to be an end of sorts – or at least a political settlement – but the future for RTÉ remains less than straightforward.
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