Manage Preferences<\/a><\/p>\nSpeaking to RT\u00c9\u2019s News at One, Mr O’Donovan said he wanted to “acknowledge” the work of RT\u00c9’s current Chief Financial Officer in “preparing the reports” and bringing attention to “some legacy issues”.<\/p>\n
“The CFO, the Chief Financial Officer, has been going through in deep detail some of the issues she encountered,” he said.<\/p>\n
Mr O’Donovan said the land issue “may now have an impact on the future development of the campus”.<\/p>\n
He said the acre was “given in short-term use” to Eircom a number of years ago but “now obviously the ownership of that is an issue”.<\/p>\n
“And there’s obviously then as well some tax issues with regard to personnel abroad,” Mr O\u2019Donovan said.<\/p>\n
Mr O’Donovan said that as the minister responsible for RT\u00c9, he wants to “be able to stand full-square” behind the current management and Executive, who he said are “doing a very good job in the backdrop of what was a cataclysmic situation in RT\u00c9 in terms of transformation”.<\/p>\n
Mr O’Donovan also said some of the issues around the payments he wants to know more about “will be fairly straightforward” but he “needs to know and satisfy” himself that pension payments made to “survivors and widows” were done “properly”.<\/p>\n
He said he brought RT\u00c9’s annual report before the Cabinet because “there’s a lot of media reports around it, so I wanted to get it approved and published as soon as possible”.<\/p>\n
He described the latest issues as “legacy issues” that “predate” the current RT\u00c9 management team and Board but said “nonetheless they are issues that need I think to be aired”.<\/p>\n
He said the support that has been given to RT\u00c9 is “substantial”.<\/p>\n
“Public funding is at about \u20ac222.3m, up from \u20ac193m in 2023.<\/p>\n
“So it’s a \u20ac29m increase in public sector funding for RT\u00c9 and at the same time we’ve seen the licence fee fall by \u20ac4m,” Mr O\u2019Donovan added.<\/p>\n
He said one severance payment in 2024 detailed in RT\u00c9’s annual report struck him as “very high” and he will “absolutely” be asking about it at a scheduled meeting with the Chairman of the RT\u00c9 Board on 6 November, as well as other issues that have been highlighted, including land at RT\u00c9.<\/p>\n
“The Montrose site is an exceptionally valuable asset and there are potentially opportunities for the future development of that asset to support the company into the future,.” he said.<\/p>\n
Licence fee<\/p>\n
According to RT\u00c9’s annual report, income from the licence fee dropped \u20ac4 million last year compared to 2023.<\/p>\n
Minister O’Donovan said it was too early to say whether there has been a recovery this year in television licence fee receipts but he hoped to have more information “before the end of the year”.<\/p>\n
He said the best awareness that can be provided to inform people of the importance of paying the TV licence is “having a public sector broadcaster that we value as part of our democracy”.<\/p>\n
“This is something that we all have an obligation to pay for…that needs to be funded, and people who own a television need to put their hand in their pocket and pay for the television licence,” he added.<\/p>\n
In relation to staff departures from RT\u00c9, Minister O’Donovan said he hoped the broadcaster would “live up” to its target of 100 departures by the end of the year, and its overall target of 400.<\/p>\n
He said the Government “came good” with the amount of money it had to “pony up to keep RT\u00c9 afloat…but that support is not endless.<\/p>\n
“We did require stuctural reform, we did require change, we were told we were going to get it and for that change we’ve put forward the monies on behalf of the people.<\/p>\n
“But that is not bottomless and it’s not endless, so I would hope and I would expect that RT\u00c9 live up to their side of the bargain in respect of the agreement that’s there with the Government.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Minister for Arts, Culture and Media Patrick O’Donovan has said he wants to hear more from RT\u00c9 about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-110568","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}