Not up to politicians to run RTÉ, says Simon Coveney

Vivienne Clarke

Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Simon Coveney has said that if people don’t pay their television licence then there will not be public service broadcasting.

Not buying a tv licence creates a bigger financial problem which the Government would have to resolve with an intervention, he told Newstalk’s Pat Kenny show.

“I know people have been frustrated and angered by what they've heard in the last number of months. You know, RTÉ has been through a process of effectively exposing and accepting mistakes that have been made. And clearly there's a need for change, and that's happening.

“But we also have to make sure that we don't, in an effort to ask the hard questions, that we don't damage RTÉ in a way that actually makes public service broadcasting weaker.”

Mr Coveney said he did not want to go into much more detail as he had a sibling who was a former executive of RTÉ, and therefore it was not appropriate for him to set the tone of the debate around RTÉ.

“But what I would say is that Ireland, without a strong independent public service broadcaster, I think would be a place where perhaps democracy wouldn't be as healthy. And look, there are lots of countries that don't have the kind of independent, strong public service broadcasting that we have here. And we need to be careful that we don't lose that.”

Mr Coveney said that politicians should not be the people deciding what the reform plan for RTÉ looks like. “That has got to be done by the director general and senior management and RTÉ working with unions and others to get this right.

“Certainly, politicians have a job to do, to ask the hard questions, to expose things that shouldn't have been happening on behalf of the public. That's our job. But it's not our job to manage RTÉ on a day to day or month to month basis.”