As RTE prepared to host the most important current affairs programme in the past five years, staff at the national broadcaster staged a silent protest over what they say is inadequate funding for the station.
As the Taoiseach and Fianna Fáil leader, Mr Ahern, and Fine Gael leader Mr Michael Noonan entered the television building for the General Election’s only televised debate tonight, hundreds of RTE staff gathered to show their concern over the level of the licence fee, which they say will lead to 400 job losses if it is not increased.
The Secretary of the RTE Trade Union Group (RTE TUG), Mr JP Coakley this evening revealed that it had received support from all of the main political parties but said the politicians words must be translated into a €10 million cash injection in order to avoid 20 per cent of the workforce being made redundant.
Staff at the station have threatened industrial action starting later this week, which could election coverage and the televising of the soccer World Cup in Japan and Korea.
Mr Coakley said: "While we welcome the support the RTE TUG has received from An Taoiseach and his party, as well as Fine Gael, Labour, the Progressive Democrats, the Greens and Sinn Féin, the workers in RTE need to see this support put into action immediately after the election if major and damaging redundancies are to be avoided".
With the level of uncollected licence fees due to evasion estimated at around €21million in each of the last few years, Mr Coakley called on all of the parties "to ensure that the next government immediately provides a cash injection of at least €10 million, to, in effect, underwrite half of the likely shortfall in the fee collected for 2002".
He said this would prevent the cash crisis at RTE becoming worse before the Forum on Public Service Broadcasting issues its report - expected at the end of July.