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

The Brenner was sitting on a bar stool listening to Emma O'Kelly being interviewed by Rachel English on the News at One.

Rachel asked her quite timidly, I thought ,a rhetorical question like 'Why should the Taxpayer put money into RTE given the profligacy and wastage just experienced'

O'Kelly ignored the question almost totally and straight away I concluded that nothing is going to change out there.

They haven't learned their lesson, the Govt bottled it, they will continue to corn hole John Q Taxpayer and laugh in his face.

It also shows again how detached this government is from the public mood. They seem to live in a bubble of their own up there. It's well known and evidenced that there is simmering discontent with the licence fee, those who pay, those who don't and the abuse of this money in RTE. Combined with the useless collection system of An Post.

They have an opportunity to grasp the nettle, to lance the boil, an open goal and … they fouk it up. Bottlers.

Maybe RTE is useful to them as an arm of government publicity, a spin machine - if so, let it be funded by the Dept Taoiseach and we'll all be clear then. Did I hear Paschal reported as saying they wouldn't forego the licence as it was a ready means to get money in? For that alone, he or whoever said, should be booted into the Irish Sea. And there should be a mass boycott to tell him to shove his patronising up his whole.

She should be asking management that question not the local head of the NUJ.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT%C3%89_secret_payment_scandal

and a short version on the executive board page

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT%C3%89_Executive_Board

I bought my TV off my mate who moved here from Scotland. It is a smart TV but doesnt have saorview and therefore I can not access RTE television and so I do not have a TV license.

With its inability to pick up TV signals, if I was (somehow) legally directed to get a TV license, I would throw it into the black bin, and go out and buy a 42" monitor. The more people who similar, eventually RTE will have to change.

There was some spoofer on with Pat Kenny earlier who was saying that license purchases are down 20% since Tubsgate, but that this decision should bring license uptake back to normal levels. I burst out laughing wondering "Based on what?". The trust remains gone. Why would anyone pay 160 a year while that trust is absent.

Sound and Vision which was originally funded via the licence fee, this was increased during covid using exchequer funding.

Also there is a small fund for News media, across broadcast, online, local, national and print, again started during covid.

The Dept of Foreign Affairs also have a small fund, if you see VMTV in the US you know they are using DFA money to fund the trip, RTÉ have 3 correspondents from this fund.

On corresponedents and Emma Kelly, how did their Washington correspondent do during all the happenings in the US?

Jaysus Catherine Martin must have been awful if even government spokesperson and Mr Angry Fionnan Sheehan is saying it was an "abject performance".

Emma O'Kelly should be the first to be made redundant. She does nothing.

You can guarantee 750m is only the start of it too, we have seen with every expenditure this government makes they run way over. RTE will be back with the paw out and the exchequer will oblige.

It's a sickening amount of money for something most of us couldn't care less about.

They may be in new building, I know they are a 'walk' from the old studios. They had Crowdstrike on installed the studio PCs, so they were out of of action.

No changes whatsoever. Massive failures and falling ratings and Catherine Martin gives even more money to RTE.

Do you notice how they decided on 3 years and not 4, wonder why they didn't give RTÉ some more security in the knowledge of what they'd be getting over 4 years.

What's a billion between friends!

This decision sums up the Government to tee. I'm not surprised by this because this same government continuously rewards failure after failure, just look at McEntee as a prime example.

This government continues to reward incompetence and failure. There is no repercussions here for RTE what so ever. It's depressing.

There's also a 3rd method of tax payers money going to RTE that hasn't been mentioned yet, buckets of government advertising on Radio and TV, even RTE Raidio Na Gaeltachta, which never had any advertising whatsoever until this year, now has buckets of government messages as gaeilge telling us not to blackmail our ex gfs with nudie pics

If only everyone could just stop paying the license from today there is nothing they could do.

Unfortunately we just roll over as a nation ince again.

Catherine Martin said she was blocked at cabinet around reform of funding model.

So after many reports and the fact it was in the programme for govt and the shenanigans of last year's revelations the decision was made to Do Nothing except throw money at the problem.

New Politics.

You'd be released within a few hours of entering the prison.

I see that they are also looking into the possibility of making the households where they don’t have details of the occupants to sign a statutory declaration that they don’t have a television.

Massive overreach and breach of our Constitutional right to privacy. The State has no right to ask me about the contents of my home unless they suspect criminal activity and they need a warrant to enter it. They may go back to the drawing board on this idea.
GDPR means that the records have to be up to date too so you’d have to submit that thing every year. Will you have to tell them when you move? Do you have to tell them where you’ve moved to and if there is a television there too? Not a runner in my book.

We need public service broadcasting, even more so in this day and age. We don’t want the only news feed we see to be determined by some tech bros in California and China. But the licence fee system is badly out of date.

Surely gaa games will be broadcast,doubt it.

There's no evidence to indicate that those "strings attached" exist or ever will exist. Fianna Fáil is not the party that it was when Ray Burke was communications minister and is thus not hostile to being held to account by the media.

Why has Martin and the rest of the government ignored the big elephant in the room? RTE being insolvent because it owes around €200M to cover it's bogus self employment tax bill.

Also why don't RTE change flip flop supplier? I have found a nice pair at €1.30 that will suit all RTE's needs.