A contract notice issued by RTE says the organisation is willing to pay half a million euro for Dublin-based taxi services over the next 36 months. The tender only covers taxi services within “the Greater Dublin Area,” and it is unclear what the organisation expects to pay for taxi services outside that area.
RTÉ has historically paid hundreds of thousands of euros each year to taxi companies to cover the costs of staff and programme guests. Figures released to the Irish Sun in 2017 showed that RTÉ spent over €500,000 on taxis in 2016 alone, with over €90,000 of that covering taxis for staff.
The contact will primarily cover transporting “contributors to and from RTÉ premises,” although the notice states that “the nature of RTÉ’s operations requires that urgent journeys may have to be undertaken by staff from time to time.”
The estimated total value of the contract is given as €405,000, but that value excludes VAT, which would be charged at 23%. The total cost of the contract to RTÉ, including VAT, is therefore €498,150 – roughly €166,000 a year, or over €450 a day. And that’s only for taxis inside “the Greater Dublin Area.”
The amounts paid by RTÉ for taxis have long been a subject of interest to those who claim the organisation is a profligate spender of public funds. In 2001, according to The Sunday Independent, RTÉ spent nearly £100,000 more on taxis than the entirety of the Irish civil service.
RTÉ reported a deficit of €7.2m in 2019, which followed a deficit of €13m in 2018. Despite making €196m from the television license fee in 2019 the organisation has been strenuously lobbying for more public funds to be diverted to them, and for the government to take steps to increase the take up rate of the television license.