Labour party Senator Marie Sherlock has described the government’s €725 million funding plan for RTÉ as “a sticking plaster” without any long-term vision.
Speaking on RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland, Senator Sherlock added that while the reality was that support was needed to fund public service broadcasting, she rejected the notion that this funding was “a golden envelope.”
“At least now we have a decision from government. Obviously, this has dragged on for way longer than it should have. And the fundamental questions for me yesterday for government were, do we have certainty now in terms of how public service broadcasting is going to be funded into the future?”
Senator Sherlock pointed out that “top up” funding payments to RTÉ by government long predated the current crisis at the station. This was not a new phenomenon, she said, and the question remained - was there a long term funding plan. “I don’t believe we got that yesterday.”
“I think there is an overwhelming sense that we have a sticky plaster now for the next three years, but there's no long term vision, no concrete vision for how public service broadcasting is going to be funded into the future. And I think there's a fundamental problem with that.”
Senator Sherlock said if the country was serious about public service broadcasting then the State had to support it, but it also had to support the independent sector for the public service content they produced.
“The reality is that we've had a TV licence for many years now.
"There are huge problems with that, and I think there is actually an issue that was not addressed yesterday. And to my mind, the elephant in the room is that RTÉ relies to such a very significant extent on commercial advertising.
"That was, to my mind, part of the reason for why we've had the problems in the past, the gamble with the Toy Show and other very significant spending mistakes. And I think that wasn't addressed yesterday.
“The reality is that I think if you talk to the workers in RTÉ, they're facing a loss of 400 jobs, it's in the plan for RTÉ that it wants to be a smaller organisation over the next five years. I don't believe that this is any sort of golden envelope."
