Sir, - In a recent article, Charlie Bird (Opinion, July 10th) called for a debate on RT╔, which of course is to be welcomed.
He suggests, however, that the first people to engage in this debate must be the RT╔ workforce, who, he says, are not happy with the LICENCE FEE increase now granted. Might I humbly suggest that, on the contrary, the debate would need to be something more than an extension of the RT╔ canteen debate he mentions, with the customers merely as onlookers? What is needed is something altogether more fundamental.
The public currently pays a licence fee to RT╔ amounting to a net £44 million per annum, a figure RT╔ would like to see doubled. Regardless of any change in the licence fee, it would be absurd to contemplate continuing, willy nilly, the granting of this major contract to the same organisation, year in year out, without competitive tenders, and without objective assessment of performance.
Two basic issues need to be examined: 1. Do we need public service broadcasting? If so, what do we want from it, how should the objectives be achieved, and how much are we willing to pay for it? 2. How has RT╔ performed in this regard? Rightly or wrongly, RT╔ has evolved into the principal interlocutor between government and governed. In order to avoid any discussion on its performance becoming an RT╔-controlled PR exercise, the public would need to be put in possession of rather more information than is presently available.
They would need to know, how does RT╔ operate? What has the public got for the £1.5 billion paid to this organisation over the Past 40 years? Has RT╔ handled its position of power responsibly? And, most importantly, what is its real relationship with the government of the day - i.e., does RT╔ work for the Govern ment, or is RT╔ the Government? The only way of getting at all this, and thus creating the condition for an informed public debate, is to establish some form of independent public inquiry. The task before us couldn't be more important to the health of our democracy - that of selecting a national watchdog, committed to working fairly, objectively and professionally on behalf of the people, and only the people. - Yours, etc.,
Donal O'Driscoll, Dargle Road, Blackrock, Co Dublin.