If, as reported last week, the Government is set to reject a proposal to use the customer database of cable and satellite providers to track down TV licence evaders, it will be a case of political cowardice dressed up as data protection.
Backbenchers do not want grief on the doorstep from licence evaders. Politics too often trumps policy when it comes to broadcasting.
But RTÉ needs money to provide high-quality public service programmes. Good journalism, drama and art are too easily squeezed out when the station is forced to chase advertising.
Media in general are under severe financial pressure, at a time when Ireland requires more investigative journalism. Fierce competition, and in some cases shareholder greed, have driven down the ability or willingness of media organisations to employ enough journalists of a sufficiently high calibre or to give them enough time and freedom to deliver indepth analysis of complex issues.
The ethos of public service broadcasting has been overshadowed at RTÉ by its commercial imperative. Political complacency and vested interest has allowed the station to drift.
What is needed, as in other areas of Irish life, is some radical thinking and a shake-up.
Can we dare to conceive of RTÉ as a fresh and exciting force for change and vision? A few brave initiatives would help.
The money paid to “big name” presenters is obscene. Nobody in RTÉ should be paid more than €150,000 per year. Bite the bullet and let them go elsewhere if they will.
There is a vast pool of young talent in Ireland. Give them their head.
RTÉ has been polluted by the ethos of big egos throwing shapes. There is not even an open register of the interests of programme-makers. Sponsorship is a further threat to independent programming, as regards both topics and content.
Unimpressive schedule
Glancing at RTÉ schedules, one could be forgiven for thinking at times that the station is a kind of Irish version of the UK’s ITV network.
Yet RTÉ continues to make good programmes, and its current director-general, Noel Curran, has been personally associated with some of its best achievements. Given the political will and backing, he could redirect the station and facilitate its use as a venue for more creative thinking from a broader range of voices.
The station at present reflects the complacency of Irish society, currently telling itself that everything is really fine, or soon will be.
RTÉ needs an intellectually sharper edge, which is not the same as its presenters throwing shapes or striking poses.
When RTÉ does bite, it faces fierce resistance from those who ultimately control its purse strings, as seen in the Government’s threatening response to its coverage of the shambles that is Irish Water.
RTÉ is as it is because those ultimately responsible for its funding have let it get that way. Cost-efficient by international standards, RTÉ must get by on TV licence revenue that is relatively low. And the Government has started to tap even that as a source of social welfare funding.
Sale of network
Suggestions that RTÉ “sell off” its second radio and television networks are no solution on their own. There is some merit in its argument that it uses commercial revenue to sustain other activities.
But RTÉ tries a bit too hard to be all things to all people, as its statutory reports to the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland demonstrate.
In a state where broadcasting policy has long been a political football, one has to admire RTÉ’s capacity to survive. Its task gets no easier. Its current on-air promotion of RTÉ Radio’s coverage of the rugby world cup points up quite pathetically its inability to afford the TV rights.
We are facing a deluge of tedious commemorations of 1916. A living way to celebrate the energy of those who fought would be to give a new generation the journalistic resources to address realistically and in depth the kinds of social and environmental challenges the global economy is creating.
Top wage of €150,000
And start by capping payments at RTÉ. What’s the worst that can happen if you impose a limit of €150,000? That is still a lot of money. Have we no confidence in young people who can step up?
Public service broadcasting is not about agents doing deals for egos. It is about people such as the late Michael Littleton, who gave us an RTÉ radio schedule that woke up Ireland in the last quarter of the 20th century, or TV presenter Brian Farrell, whose principal motivation was certainly not money-grubbing. Colum Kenny is professor of communications at Dublin City University