Dee Forbes banging the RTE TV licence drum again 60m uncollected fee *poll not working - pl ignore*

what bugs me about this is that RTE is funded through taxpayers money and this is compulsory. So RTE is in effect state funded and has to answer to the state, in other words RTE and the Government are in this together particularly when it comes to broadcasting , reporting and zero transparency or objectivity!

To muddy the water more, Simon Coveney's brother had one of the top jobs in RTE - got a huge termination fee and is unavailable for comment. Surely this is a huge conflict of interest. In so many ways RTE is a branch of Government. How can it be impartial? If people stop paying their licence fee and RTE is 100% funded by some Government department then it can never be impartial or objective! Do we want this???

(apologies this point may have already been made but I am not trawling back through 380 pages of posts).

Never trusted Bakhurst and still don’t! He was brought in to “smooth” things over, he is obviously doing that perfectly.

in NO private company, could a director run a play/project without authorisation and loose millions without being fired on the spot, no severance pay. That is called dereliction of duty by a director, that’s why you have a board to run things past and get approval.

what I see going on right now, is that Bakhurst is covering up other wrongdoing. He also needs to go.

The givernment needs to ACT on behalf of the Tax Payer, in any other country, these people would be escorted to any enquiry by police … sick my a@se!

The whole thing is a charade at this stage.

PS… have a TV license always have had, but this year, good luck getting €160 from me!

Could you not argue that a competent manager would have known what he was getting into before he accepted the role? The analogy of finding yourself being parachuted into the Battle of Arnheim only works if there was a sudden revelation of poor management and financial decisions within RTE, but the dogs have the street have known that for years. A competent manager would have researched the organisation, and when comparing the salaries alone in RTE compared to say the BBC would have been bowled over, and then deciding "Clearly things need to change, if I take this job its going to be an up hill struggle, do I say yes and start implementing change or do I say sod it, I can't be arsed".

Backhurst is an RTE insider, steeped in the ways of RTE which is not what RTE needs. RTE needs an outsider, preferably someone from outside media to go in there and clear the place out and put in proper processes throughout the place. That person can then bring in their own outsiders with media experience to improve the place. But first the place needs to be gutted of insiders, way too many in there.

I really wish Bakhurst had let the likes of Coveney try to take RTE to the WRC. Even if they got a larger payout in the long run, let them have the balls to lose RTE millions and bring RTE into disrepute, and then take RTE to the WRC and justify why they should get their payout. It should have been a rod for their own backs rather than RTE giving them a payoff to get rid of them while also ensuring they don't have to appear before any committee hearings.

Would love to see this happening. It seems these pay offs or moving people sideways is the way in Public Service when wanting to get rid of people.

Doing…………?

Oh I'd say she was eyeing up a payoff like Collins and Coveney got.

What is it with the Coveney's?

Years back, one brother was involved in the horse meat scandal, and now the other one is showing he's just as privileged and ignorant as the other one.

They strike as the kind of people that, if you ask them what todays date is, you'd have to double check on every single calendar. They're just that untrustworthy.

Backarse needs to go too

It's a complete $hitshow at RTE

AGS and Revenue should be investigating

The government should take a stronger approach

I think if Backhurst goes, that could be it for RTE as currently constituted.

The replacement would have to do something much more radical

The problem with any DG coming into RTE to 'sort' things out is that they basically cant do their job as they are not allowed do compulsory redundancies. Any voluntary redundancy scheme involves big pay offs so we are back to where we are now. The politicians are ultimately responsible.

They didn’t lick it off the stones, so to speak Cawler!

Ultimately there is a rotten culture of corruption and pocket lining at RTE and that won't necessarily go away with a change of DG. The govt have to drive the reform and it would take serious individuals who want to reset the organisation at root and branch level to sort out this mess in the long term.

That's just not going to happen, so we're left with rewarding incompetence and trying to draft in another bunch of leeches who will simply carry on where the old crew left off, ala the Irish banks. Have THEY suddenly become bastions of ethics in business? lol

I don't see any issue with funding coming directly from the exchequer. The argument that RTE will then become the tool of the government of the day is nonsense because RTE are already the tool of the government. If anything, letting RTE collect shedloads of cash off the population in the form of the license fee, removes responsibility from the government for the running of the organisation. It's another excuse for the minister to ignore the problem and kick the can on to the next term. Maybe if RTE needed €500m from the Dept of Finance annually, they would be slightly more incentivized to pay attention to how that cash is being spent.