RTÉ has acknowledged it is unlikely to fulfil its promise to produce a €3.2 million annual surplus for 2003. The station's forecasts suggest a surplus of €500,000 is a more likely outcome.

The station said a shortfall of €5 million in licence fee income collected by An Post was a major reason for this.

The station has always said a surplus of €3.2 million was possible, but only if An Post met certain licence fee targets.

An Post for its part has signalled it wants to exit the collection of the licence fee. The latest figures are included in RTÉ's response to this week's licence fee decision by the Minister for Communications, Mr Ahern. He decided to award the station a €2 increase on the €150 fee, which was below inflation.

Meanwhile, the RTÉ group of unions has warned it will respond with industrial action if attempts are made to cut staff numbers further at the station. The group said yesterday that 170 staff left the organisation in 2003 and 480 left in 2000-02 and that staff were angry and not prepared to countenance further reductions.

The unions are seeking an urgent meeting with Mr Ahern. Earlier this week, a statement from the Minister said RTÉ had not met its staff-reduction targets. It added that the Government was concerned at "the lack of substantive progress under the change programme, particularly in relation to reducing staff numbers". The statement was linked to the announcement that RTÉ would not be receiving a full inflationary increase in the licence fee because it had not made enough progress in the area of staff reductions. This was based on a report given to the Minister by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

The group of unions convened a special meeting yesterday to discuss a response to these conclusions. Union officials angrily dismissed any notion that further redundancies were necessary and reaffirmed the intention to initiate an "industrial response" if the Government moved to reduce staff numbers.

The unions want the PwC report published as soon as possible. A spokesman for the Minister said this would happen shortly on the Department's website. He said RTÉ management wanted to make sure no commercially sensitive material was included in the sections released.

The spokesman said Mr Ahern would be happy to meet the unions, although he claimed unions at RTÉ had not been in contact with the Department for more than a year.

The unions said greater transparency regarding the Minister's criteria for assessing organisational change in RTÉ was needed.

The Minister also said he would commission research into allegations that RTÉ had distorted the advertising market.