RTÉ pay scandal: We will all suffer in the long run from a stripped-back public broadcaster

We should fund RTÉ directly, through our taxes. Admittedly, that statement will be received by many with the welcome levels of a fart in a phone box given the current hidden payments crisis.

The disclosure that the public broadcaster had paid a presenter an extra €345,000 than previously reported had the public and politicians alike feeling very cranky. But not, presumably, as cranky as other RTÉ staff who have suffered wage stagnation and redundancy rounds among other cost-saving measures thanks to gaping financial deficiencies. The same staff who will once again be asked to do more with less if the Government makes good on threats to delay a funding model overhaul. While the people at the centre of the whole thing – the pinpoints of the public outrage – have already got their money and banked it.

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The saddest thing to come out of it wasn’t the photos of Tubs standing in front of a garden hedge looking suitably dejected like an embattled UK politician. You know the one: ironed shirt, sad face, palms turned up to the sky.

No, the real victim here is funding reform for the cash-strapped public broadcaster which is currently under Government review. “That’s the end of it forever,” a senior Government source told The Irish Times last week, while Minister for Media Catherine Martin has made noise about “trust” needing to be re-established before discussions about funding can move on.

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Which is bad news for all of us in the long run. Ireland does not have a large, national non-commercial news channel. There is no BBC equivalent that does not rely on advertising to get by. Ideally in a media landscape you would have outlets completely unafraid to pursue things that could jeopardise government funding because they don’t receive any, and outlets who don’t let commercial interests influence coverage because they don’t rely on ad money. Those are the checks and balances.

Ireland’s public broadcaster is commercial. It’s funded with ads. But, thankfully, not totally. It still gets public money through the TV licence.

The current funding model is to ask people to buy a €160 licence if they own a television, something most households have had access to since the 1970s. It’s actually been so long since this technology has been invented, many of us have moved on to watch things on different devices instead.

We tell people if they want to watch their stories on their telly box, they best fork out for a licence or they’ll be in big trouble if and when the licence inspector rocks up at their door.

We have a funding model that relies on people’s inability to hide quick enough when they hear a knock and pretend they’re not home from a stranger at their front door. That’s all that stands between us and a public broadcaster, a key touchstone of an open democracy.

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People laughed at how antiquated we were when we used to tax people per window in order to fund property tax. But at least you could see the windows from the outside of the dwelling so there was little cheating.

As any parent of an overtired toddler in a shop will tell you, a vague threat that “the man will come and you’ll get in trouble” to induce compliance will only work for a limited amount of time.

Eventually people work out that the man indeed may not come and they don’t bother paying.

Depending on who you ask, Australian tax payers fork over about 4 cent to 11 cent to the Australian Broadcast Company (ABC) for their services as part of their income tax. Not as a separate charge. I’m okay with this because the ABC provides two essential services: their network of local radio in rural areas saves lives when it acts as an emergency broadcaster during fires and floods; and the children’s TV show Bluey, which acts as emergency babysitter when you need to put dinner on during witching hour.

Think about all the services RTÉ provides. Who would your mad uncle ring to give out about the state of the roads or young people these days if it wasn’t for Liveline? It would be you. That’s who. You’d pay at least 10 cent a day to someone else to deal with that and consider it money well spent.

It feels right to begrudge the broadcaster potential public funds during an accounting scandal. Like complaining that we should only give a child we don’t really like a lesser amount of Communion money because “they’ll only waste it on sweets”. But it will be us who suffers in the long run from a stripped-back public broadcaster.