Brendan Griffin (Kerry, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Minister needs to find out how this decision was reached, given how much funding was at stake and how much exposure there is for the taxpayer as a result of the dramatic fall-off of over €17 million in licence fee renewals and new licences. She needs to scrutinise who was in the room, how the decision was made and if RTÉ can explain why it was made. If a private company was haemorrhaging income, you can be damn sure it would dig in. However, when it is the national broadcaster and the State is there to bail it out, it does not look good.

On the licence fee and advertising of it, there needs to be a review of who takes responsibility for that. RTÉ has not taken this duty seriously. Since June, it has stepped away, to a degree, from this. Maybe it is something the Department needs to take control of, given it is not just RTÉ that benefits from it and it is clearly not a priority for RTÉ to advertise the importance of the licence fee, its collection and the number of jobs dependent on it. We have seen no official messaging from RTÉ in that regard since this happened. I have noticed a marked fall-off in the amount of advertising by RTÉ of this. The only change I have seen is it started to thank people in the autumn for renewing their licence but none of the stuff has happened that anyone worth their salt on a board or in a conference room would say needs to be part of the core messaging now that the cheese has moved. That needs to be scrutinised further by the Minister, given the huge amounts of public money at stake.