The Taoiseach said he does not think it is ‘entirely right in a modern era’ for most of the TV licence fee funding to go to RTE.
The Government has said requests from RTE for interim funding would be “interrogated” before a final decision is made on what the broadcaster should be allocated.
“I know some of it doesn’t at the moment, there is a broadcasting fund, but the vast majority of it does and I don’t think that’s entirely right in a modern era,” he said.“There should be a greater degree of competition for what is ultimately public money. It included figures in the RTE annual report for 2022, published on Wednesday, showing the broadcaster incurred a deficit of 2.8 million euro last year – a 5.2 million euro decline compared to a surplus of 2.4 million euro in 2021.
Mr Varadkar said any additional funding would be conditional on the contents of the national broadcaster’s strategic plan for reform. “I think the vast majority of the public do value what RTE does, in terms of news, in terms of funding Irish drama, children’s programming, Irish language programming.“But I don’t think that the Irish public would accept a financial bailout of RTE with no strings attached. There have to be strings attached, it has to be conditional and that’s why we’re not in a position to sign off on something like that until we’ve seen the new strategy and the reform plan from RTE which is due next month.
He added of RTE’s reform plan: “This isn’t something that has to be sorted out on Budget Day. This is something that has to be sorted out in this financial year, but it doesn’t have to be on Budget Day.”
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