RTE yesterday reported a surplus for 1996 of £2.5 million, but in its core business of broadcasting it lost money, recording a deficit of just over £2 million.
An increase in the licence fee from £62 to £70 generated an extra £3.2 million in revenue. However, RTE's chairman, Mr Farrel Corcoran, said the cost of funding 365 hours of broadcasting for Teilifis na Gaeilge had created an unhealthy ratio of public funding to commercial revenue.
Mr Corcoran said this imbalance made the national broadcaster increasingly reliant on a volatile source of revenue, advertising, which fluctuated in tandem with changes in the economy. The trend to lose money in the core activity has been a feature of recent years, according to Mr Corcoran, and is continuing and intensifying.
'There is as yet no new source of revenue to give the long-term support needed for production of 365 hours of television programmes for TnaG,' he said.
Channel 5 is the last terrestrial channel in Britain but, Mr Corcoran said, many new English-language services will become available via satellite, cable and digital terrestrial transmission that will compete for the attention of Irish viewers.
RTE's chief executive, Mr Bob Collins, said technological advance would not of itself necessarily enhance the lives of the audience. 'The creation of unlimited networks of information will not of itself make anyone wiser and enable us to make better life choices.'