RTÉ will get inflation-linked licence fee increases in future if it meets new programming and management standards laid down by an independent regulator, the Government has decided.
Yesterday, the Minister for Communications, Mr Ahern, gave RTÉ €36 of the €44 licence increase it had sought. A 12-month licence will now cost €150, but the black-and-white licence is to be abolished. However, €7 of each fee payment has been put aside to create an €8 million fund to back "innovative" public service programming by any broadcaster licensed by RTÉ and the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland, including RTÉ and TG4.
In a blunt message, Mr Ahern said RTÉ would have to screen more quality home-produced programming. "The foreign programmes are on everywhere. We have too much of that," he said.
"RTÉ is in the process of delivering significant change. It knows further change is on the way and it has to be more cost-effective and financially accountable in how it delivers its remit."
The director general of RTÉ, Mr Bob Collins, said: "It is a very large increase, it is a very satisfactory outcome. We are very, very pleased and very relieved."
A new body, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, will take over the regulatory powers of the RTÉ Authority and the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland, which licenses independent radio and television. It will be able to grant fee increases to RTÉ in line with inflation, or just behind it, as long as the station meets performance standards agreed with the Department.
Quoting PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Department said the licence fee would not solve all of RTÉ's problems. It had had a poor record implementing change.
TV3 said the increase had been decided "behind closed doors" and that it called the viability of independent television into question. The reforms promised by RTÉ were "aspirational in detail and will not be fully implemented until 2006". "This is completely unacceptable," TV3 said.
In future, RTÉ will have to produce multi-annual accounts and give notice of the spending on programmes in each of its television and radio channels.
An Post will hold the contract to collect the RTÉ licence until 2006, though it must collect €165 million from 1.17 million households next year or face a penalty. Pubs will have to pay a special commercial licence. Already, many pay specially set rates to show football on Sky Television.
The public will be able to pay their bills by direct debit. The abolition of the black-and-white licence will affect 5,500 households, the Government acknowledged.
RTÉ trade unions last night welcomed the increase, but said it did not solve all of the company's problems as 170 radio and television jobs would still go.
The Fine Gael spokesman on communications, Mr Simon Coveney, said half of the increase should be held back for a year to ensure that RTÉ honoured its promise to run itself more efficiently and to produce better programming.
Green Party TD Mr Éamon Ryan acknowledged that the new fee would affect inflation. "The failure to provide for a proper public broadcasting service would leave the country poorer in the long run."
RTÉ must now use the extra cash "to stop the downward spiral of recent years and create a new culture where creative and questioning programme-makers are championed."
The SIPTU broadcasting branch secretary at RTÉ, Mr Jimmy Jordan, said commercial funding should have been addressed separately from public service funding.
The Irish secretary of the National Union of Journalists, Mr Séamus Dooley, said independent production companies should now offer union rates and conditions in return for the State aid.
