A team of consultants will be appointed to ensure that RTÉ meets all the commitments it has made as part of the licence fee increase, the Minister for Communications, Mr Ahern, has said.
Mr Ahern was speaking yesterday after accepting RTÉ's "statement of commitments" which lays out what the station will do in exchange for the €43 increase in the licence fee.
In a statement, Mr Ahern said the commitments needed to be verified independently at year- end. His spokesman said consultants would be appointed to cover 2003, with a new broadcasting regulator taking on the role in future years. He said the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) was not empowered to regulate RTÉ's programming at present.
Mr Ahern said there would be 152 hours of new home-produced programming on RTÉ as a result of the licence fee decision and this would lead to job increases for the independent sector.
The station has printed the commitments in the RTÉ Guide so that viewers can assess whether the station meets them.
However RTÉ's rival, TV3, reacted angrily to their publication and accused RTÉ of not spelling out precisely how much home-produced programming will be broadcast in 2003.
"RTÉ again refuses to quantify the total number of hours of Irish-produced programming that will be shown on a per channel basis on RTÉ1, Network 2 and TG4.
"In fact, given the way that the information was presented today, the fact remains that each channel could actually decrease the amount of total home-produced programming," said a statement from the company.
It has requested an urgent meeting with Mr Ahern to discuss the matters arising from the RTÉ document.
The chief executive of TV3, Mr Rick Hetherington, said: "RTÉ is privileged with a very large and measurable sum of money each year from the Government, equal to the entire TV advertising market in Ireland. In addition, RTÉ takes the largest share of that advertising market on which the independent broadcast sector is solely reliant."
However Mr Ahern, at a press conference, said the statement of commitments was about programming and detailed issues in relation to RTÉ's financial operation would be addressed in a code of fair trading to be released shortly.
The chairman of RTÉ, Mr Patrick Wright, meanwhile said the station was still looking at selling some assets, including land and the RTÉ Guide, in an effort to raise revenue. He said the licence fee increase meant these issues could be studied carefully and without any hint of panic. There would be no fire sale and the station would move on the matters in due course.