RTÉ's €725m funding not 'a reward' for mistakes, insists Kevin Bakhurst
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RTÉ director general Kevin Bakhurst has said the €725m funding plan for the broadcaster is not "a reward" for the organisation's mistakes.
On Wednesday, it was announced that the Government would provide the broadcaster with €725m in public funding over the next three years coming from Exchequer-funded top-ups to licence fee sales.
Mr Bakhurst said that the last 13 months had been "tough" on the organisation and its staff, but he believes that new structures and procedures at the station will ensure the controversies of last year will not happen again.
According to Mr Bakhurst, the "vast majority" of the funding will be spent to "directly benefit" audiences, and "investing further" in the RTÉ Player is a priority.
"We will be making it a better experience. We've already improved it substantially, and the numbers on it have grown hugely in the last 12 months, but we're going to be investing more in the Player," he told RTÉ's Morning Ireland programme.
Mr Bakhurst went on to reject criticism by Virgin Media that the Government funding was “a reward” for inefficiency and bad practice. He believes it was a reward for setting out a strategy that is "unanswerable in its logic" and in "delivering a modern public service broadcaster that can deliver for audiences into the future".
"If you believe, as a society or as a Government, that public service media plays a role in society, whether it's about providing reliable news, providing investigations, providing entertainment for audiences, that has to be funded properly so that we can deliver properly for audiences," he said.
RTÉ's new strategy is "robust" and the funding has been designed to support that strategy, Mr Bakhurst said. He went on to say he is "actually very grateful to the Government".
"They could have ducked this decision entirely, and they haven't. They’ve given us that certainty of funding, which is really critical for us to continue to serve audiences in Irish society.
"I think it is our job and we have a moral responsibility and an overall responsibility to demonstrate to audiences the value of RTÉ. It is something absolutely worth paying for."
Speaking on the same programme, Labour senator Marie Sherlock described the new funding plan as a "sticky plaster" without any long-term vision.
Senator Sherlock also rejected the notion that the funding was a "golden envelope" for RTÉ.
She pointed out that “top-up” funding payments to RTÉ by the Government long pre-dated 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."