Is it any wonder that RTÉ is the strange creature that it is, when its debts are not collected by itself but by an organisation that sells stamps and distributes pensions? The ancestral connection between An Post and RTÉ is unrelated to the realities of the world either now inhabits; it belongs to the day when Radio Éireann lived in poky little offices at the back of the GPO in O'Connell Street, and its parent organisation went by the name "Posts and Telegraphs".
But rather like two trees which grow into one another, they have remained linked, though they have gone in entirely opposite directions. P&T privatised, the T and RE became RTÉ and moved to Montrose. Yet the descendent of the aged P retains the ancestral duties of collecting the licence money for an organisation with which it has nothing whatever in common. To be sure, it gains a percentage of the money it collects for licences, but An Post and RTÉ, unlike the vast majority of other commercial organisations, are not driven by the convention or impulses of profit.
Indeed, being ultimately answerable to government, neither even begins to understand the real meaning of the term "profit".
And the real wonder about RTÉ is not that it is dysfunctional, but that it not completely barking mad. Its multiple union problems alone made it suitable for an anti-radiation missile: it once had two members of the seamen's union on its staff, so that they could climb the transmission mast.
RTÉ management doesn't work towards goals it sets for itself, but politically driven goals set by government. It has been landed with responsibility for keeping the Irish language alive, but with no extra money, with one radio station and one television station, which is rather like mopping up the Atlantic with a handkerchief. It has to maintain three English-language radio stations, and two English-language television stations, with extensive (but largely ignored) public service remits.
Finally, it has to support two orchestras, which have almost no apparent working relationship with the rest of the organisation.
Yet it doesn't raise its own revenue, or prosecute those who renege on their lawful debts, or send in the bailiffs. Instead, the basic prop of its commercial existence, funding, depends not on its efforts but on those of An Post.
Now, logically, you'd think An Post would be in the business of communicating; but it's not. Look up "Post" in the telephone directory, and you'll find nothing at all, not even a suggestion that you look under "An".
But that's where it's listed: the equivalent of putting something under "The" - which of course, nobody does.
So is it surprising that a communications organisation that can't even manage to get itself into the telephone directory in a findable fashion - one which outsiders can understand - has proven itself to be an utterly woeful debt collector? There has never been a time when the postal authorities managed to extract anything like the full RTÉ licence revenue from the domestic market; but I - with that same innocence which caused me to look under "P" for "Post" - always assumed that An Post had the commercial market for television licences well under control.
Utterly untrue. We learnt earlier this week that An Post is only now coming round to rattling the collector's purse under the nose of the commercial sector. This is frankly incredible. The most affluent part of the economy, which could effortlessly have contributed hugely to the national broadcaster, has remained organisationally untapped throughout RTÉ's entire existence. (Which prompts the question: Has even RTÉ got a television licence? Has Dáil Éireann? Has An Post?) This nonsense has gone on for years, while the ancient machinery of licence payment has remained where it started in 1925, at £1 a wireless set, in O'Connell Street. And the principle has remained the same as it was back in those honest days when Garda stations all had lost-and-found offices, and depends on the voluntary declaration that one has a piece of licensable equipment.
This is ludicrous. If we are to continue to have a semi-State broadcasting service, it should be collecting its own revenue. And instead of taxing television ownership, it should tax re-transmission, so that all cable and deflector companies would have to pay a licence fee for each consumer they supplied. They, of course, would pass the debt on, and a similar charge should be placed on the ownership of satellite dishes, which are relatively easy to monitor.
But all this prompts the question of whether we should even have a public broadcasting service. The days of state-run, licence-subsidised broadcasting, like state-run airlines, are probably coming to an end, even for the BBC. A privatised RTÉ would mean the sale of Montrose and the relocation of the station to an industrial estate, like TV3.
And the sad truth is that, unlike the BBC, RTÉ has achieved relatively little of lasting cultural value through its public service broadcasting, as opposed to its sports, current affairs and light entertainment. Moreover, unlike the BBC (with its affectionate nickname Auntie) RTÉ arouses little or no loyalty among either those who pay for it, the licence-payers, or more especially, those who are paid by it. Indeed, a great many people who work for RTÉ seem to loathe it with every fibre of their being.
And as a matter of interest, has anyone in RTÉ told Bryan Dobson that the Australians, like ourselves and the British, pronounce "lieutenant" as "leftenant" not as "lootenant", as he addressed an Australian army officer the other day? In the BBC, someone would have done.