Dee Forbes banging the RTE TV licence drum again 60m uncollected fee *poll not working - pl ignore*

What is the central issue?

The elephant in the room. Mismanagement of the National Public Service Broadcaster. This thread is almost completely dedicated to that since it started 7 years ago. Are you just being obstinate?

Why are you being so naive ?

Do you envision RTE continuing to pay obscene salaries to its "talent", salaries that go well beyond the market rate?

The rte mismanagement scandal was multifaceted but a particularly important aspect was how detached management were from market reality. This was simply because they had essentially unlimited public funds at their discretionary disposal, because like the banks they knew they'd be bailed out.

However it's my view that rte are neither too big nor too important to fail. It should not be rescued. And it certainly shouldn't receive funding in the form floated at the weekend.

That said, this suggestion did not get much traction at the weekend, so seems likely that they will go with some form of this idea, unless the government collapses in the interim.

Yet another twist to the drama...

​The infamous RTÉ barter account had another €650,000 sloshing around in it that nobody knew about.

At this stage the entire thing (RTE) needs to wound down. After all the hearings, all the coverage and analysis, all the resignations and appointments, all the promises of change - we're still finding more stuff!

The idea that people are legally forced to pay for this gravy train is even more abhorrent. Micheal Martin's insistence that the license fee be retained (but with an added exchequer top up) is even worse.

Time to just write it off. It's not worth it, offers very little of real value or that can't be found elsewhere, and it's just another example of an expensive job scheme for the well connected and their offspring.

https://www.independent.ie/news/hidden-654000-spend-from-barter-account-at-rte-that-went-unreported/a638632610.html

Revenue will be collecting the household media charge.

So people with no TV will be penalised for being frugal.

How will they know if someone has an internet connection? They could be using a phone as a wifi internet hotspot.

Easy, they just request the data from the internet providers. They are not restricted by GDPR etc etc when it comes to tax compliance.

The generation currently running Revenue are from an IT background and have have a "unsatisfiable quest for raw data".

Not easy…. someone can dump their mobile phone contract and use mobile top-up, still able to use internet.

Revenue will do what ever the Department of Finance tells them to do. The simpler the better. Which is throw a Media Tax on top of the LPT.

Larry's on NewsTalk again

https://www.newstalk.com/news/rte-licence-fee-reform-means-death-by-a-thousand-cuts-1722767

The are forgetting that the collection rate will be close to 100% if included in LPT and Revenue doing the collection. Also, there will probably be little on no 'cost' to collect money, unlike An Post who take about 8%.

How many people have been laid off or took voluntary redundancy since they announced they'd have to lose a quarter of the staff?

Why was Ray D'Arcy given another million euro contract recently, when he would have done it for 400k?

Nothing is changing, and nothing will change unless people outside rte make the decisions.

Every second ad on the radio is either from a state owned entity or sponsored by the Government of Ireland, i have not bought a news paper in years , i imagine they are similar, this "encourages" the media to support the Government position on many things, or the Ad money will be pulled, very little dissent in Irish media these days from Government policy.

I suspect the Government are going to bring in a new all encompassing Media license fee, that will dangle this money in front of all the media outlets and keep them on their side with a cut of this Media license fee, bribery by any other name, dark days lie ahead once the Government basically dictates to the media what to report or lose money from the Media license.

6. Declare it bankrupt, void the ridiculous overpaid contracts, relaunch RTE that must cut its cloth according to the Advertising fees it generates, in other words apply real world rules to RTE.

If the "talent" don't like the new pay at this new RTE, off they go to the real world, there will always be someone to step in and do their job

They will do what they are doing with health, housing and the refugee crises. They will kick the can down the road and let the next government deal with.