Madam, – Clare McCormick proposes (August 10th) that RTÉ’s licence fee be cut in the context of national recession. Yet the fact is that no other public body has responded as early or as fully to the impacts of the recession as has RTÉ.
The organisation has a wide range of statutory public service objectives and is given, through the TV licence fee, approximately half the funding needed to do this. It must earn commercial income to make up the difference. The huge decline in all media commercial revenues in recent times resulted at RTÉ in a looming shortfall in its 2009 commercial revenues of nearly €70 million against what had been budgeted for.
In order to preserve its public service delivery to the maximum, the organisation took exactly the kind of frugal and disciplined measures that Ms McCormick advocates. Staff took pay cuts of up to 12.5 per cent, had increments frozen and all possible bonuses cancelled. Numbers on the payroll were reduced through voluntary early retirements. Between these and many other measures nearly €50 million was pulled out of the net operating cost base in 2009. All in the organisation have upped productivity and accepted lower earnings.
The result has been to preserve programming output to the maximum extent. The new season television schedule features more than 54 new series and 53 new editions of returning series. A full new radio season is about to be launched. This work goes on against the background of a static licence fee and drastically reduced commercial revenues. To cut the licence fee now would negate the gains made to date and hasten the loss of services so far largely averted by good economies. – Yours, etc,