Interim funding for RTÉ seems destined to pay for redundancies

Minister for Media Catherine Martin doesn’t want to be seen to be “micromanaging” RTÉ, which is fair enough – editorial independence is central to the functioning of public service broadcasters.

But this wise reluctance to prescribe specific medicines to cure RTÉ of what politicians view as a penchant for profligacy also doubles as a handy get-out clause when it comes to the hard question of what exactly it is RTÉ must do to secure interim funding over and above the €16 million that it will be awarded on budget day.

The Minister is seeking less waste and fewer inefficiencies at Montrose, she told the Oireachtas media committee yesterday. Cut, cut, cut is the message that the Government has been giving RTÉ at every opportunity. But what should it cut? Ah, but it’s not for her to say. It is instead up to RTÉ director general Kevin Bakhurst to bring suggested savings to the Minister.

Haunting this week’s meeting between the Minister, Bakhurst and RTÉ chairwoman Siún Ní Raghallaigh will be the difficult equation outlined at a September media committee hearing by RTÉ group financial controller Mike Fives. Some 51 per cent, or almost €174 million, of the broadcaster’s total operating costs of €339.3 million in 2022 were staff costs, he noted.

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It also spent €44 million on programmes commissioned from independent production companies – €41 million of which it was required to spend by law. A further €25 million was spent on acquired programming, while sports and other copyrights cost the organisation €25 million. This, Fives said, meant 80 per cent of RTÉ's annual costs were “relatively fixed”.

“Relatively” is an important qualifier here. But if RTÉ was to slash its sports outlay, viewers would notice. If RTÉ was to slash its acquired programming spend or fail to meet its statutory obligations on commissioning, it would struggle to fill two channels and, again, viewers would notice. The cuts that the Government will be especially slow to own, however, are the ones concerning the fate of RTÉ's 1,868 employees.

Bakhurst said last month that he did not believe the Government “would be keen to sign off” on compulsory redundancies. He also observed that a programme of “voluntary paid redundancies and targeted redundancies” would be one way to achieve a smaller organisation, but this would have a “price tag” that RTÉ could not afford.

This all points to the Government agreeing post-budget to bankroll a voluntary redundancy scheme as part of a future shrinking of RTÉ. But nobody is prepared to say this out loud just yet.