RTÉ DG shocked and dismayed over €20m funding cut

A row has broken out between RTE and Media Minister Patrick O'Donovan after it was confirmed that funding to the national broadcaster for twenty twenty-seven is twenty million euro short of what was agreed. At a budget press conference yesterday, Minister O'Donovan indicated the cut was due to his dissatisfaction with the pace of reform in RTE. In an email to RTE staff yesterday afternoon, Director General of RTE, Kevin Backhurst, rejected the claim that the pace of reform had been slow and said that if the funding agreement with government was not honored, the broadcaster now has some important decisions to make. Well, our arts and media correspondent, Evelyn O'Rourke, was at the press conference yesterday and joins us now. Evelyn, you might just start, if you could explain the background to this. What was the multi-annual funding model that had been in place?

Well, indeed, Sarah. So basically, in the wake of the controversies in twenty twenty-three, we obviously all know that there was a decline in RTE's license fee income. So a multi-year agreement was made between RTE and the government that would guarantee income for RTE over three years. So this year's tranche was two hundred and forty million. So that was going to be a figure, the license fees plus whatever else was needed to get to, to that figure for two hundred and forty million. Then next year was year three of this agreement. The expected figure, the figure that RTE said it was planning for, 'cause it was signed off on, was two hundred and sixty million. But obviously yesterday, and over the last twenty-four hours and maybe further, we're learning more today about it, th-that figure was going to be cut, uh, and the RTE was going to be told they were going to get two hundred and forty million-

And-

-for next year, for twenty twenty-seven. So that was gonna be the third year of this agreement.

So you were at the press conference where Minister Patrick O'Donovan was explaining his reasoning for this. What did he say?

Well, he talked about, at the start, about the fact you referenced it there, that he was unhappy with what he said was the slow progress of reform at RTE. And then, obviously, there was lots of questions throughout the press conference, and he made this point and reiterated it again and again, that Minister Chambers and himself and that every minister was kind of under pressure to, you know, have reforms in their department to look for efficiencies. And then he just said, "Look, I didn't have the money, it seemed, in the end." And he said, "Look, when I looked at the amount of money my department had," the figure he kept quoting was sort of eight hundred and forty-eight million for sort of current spending. He said, "Look, I'm in charge of all the, these institutions, galleries, right across the board, the Arts Council, sporting bodies, and when I looked at the money, the money didn't stack up for me for RTE, so the cut had to be made." Now, this, I'm gonna-

When you look at it for the entire department is of the order of forty-five million, it shows that if the allocation that was originally, I suppose, uh, in the ether to, to be allocated was given, it would have, it would