You probably missed a fascinating exchange in the Dáil yesterday in relation to the ongoing saga of RTE, and the growing public unwillingness to fund it:
The Green Party leader was responding to Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald on Wednesday, who said her party would abolish the TV licence and instead use Exchequer funding to support public service media.
Ms McDonald said tens of thousands of people were now refusing to pay the TV licence fee of €160 following the recent financial scandals at RTÉ.
She said 60 people a day were facing prosecution for non-payment of the TV licence and while the funding for public service broadcasting drained away, “Government twiddles its thumbs”.
This is, to my knowledge, the very first time that a major Irish political party has committed in public to the abolition of the licence fee, which feels like a very significant moment.
Of course, this comes with a kicker: Sinn Fein would not exactly leave RTE to starve, but would rather commit to funding it – and other media outlets – out of general taxation. You’d still be paying for RTE, but it would be coming out of the money you fork over in your payslip, and not as an extra charge.
For voters, at least, this is a very good deal: It’s a simple way for Sinn Fein to hand the public an effective refund of €160 each while at the same time putting the party on the opposite side of the fence to a state broadcaster which is in increasingly short supply of public affection.
Crucially, though, it does something else: If Sinn Fein intends to make RTE dependent on exchequer funding, then that would immensely weaken RTE’s independence, assuming one believes it is independent in the first place.
I do not write here – for now – of editorial matters. Perhaps more important in political terms is that controlling the purse strings directly would give a Sinn Fein Minister much more leverage over the things about RTE that are annoying the public: Salaries and spending.
At the moment, while the TV licence is collected by the state and handed over to RTE, there is basically no Ministerial imput into whether their budget rises or falls every year. That is dependent entirely on how many licences that An Post can collect. With direct funding, on the other hand, the annual amount would be entirely in the gift of the cabinet, meaning that the funding could be made conditional on RTE doing certain things – pay being one of those things.
In many ways, more direct Government oversight of RTE would be welcome for simple reasons of democratic accountability: The present situation allows the national broadcaster to take money from the public without there being, really, anybody who the public can vote against if they wish to see changes at RTE. This is the double-edged sword, though, for Sinn Fein: Being directly responsible for giving RTE money means being directly responsible for the blame if RTE mis-spend that money. The “Independence” of RTE right now means that when things go wrong, it is the RTE board that carries the can, not the Minister for Culture and the Media. With what Sinn Fein is proposing, that is likely to change.
And of course, there is the risk to editorial independence: Put simply, does an RTE that needs a Sinn Fein minister to approve next year’s budget make sure that said Minister gets plenty of positive airtime and coverage on RTE?
That risk, I’d argue, exists – but it’s only mildly greater than it is at the moment. After all, RTE does need politicians to defend it even as things stand, and there are a great many (and growing number) of people who’ve already noticed the broadcaster’s tendency to give Irish politicians an easier time than perhaps Sky News or the BBC give their UK equivalents.
Whatever about the consequences, it is now clear that the licence is dead, politically. In Ireland, unpopular things can survive once there is political unity behind them: Voters concerned about immigration, as I wrote on Monday, have few alternative options to support. The same was true of the TV licence, until yesterday, but that dam has now broken.
The TV licence is one of those ideas that can only really be defended by a unified political system that rejects the idea of giving voters a choice. Once they have opponents telling voters that they’ll get rid of it, it will become almost impossible for Government to hold the line. As ever in Ireland, a big change will happen slowly, and then all at once.