Last week, RTÉ’s senior executives appeared yet again before the Public Accounts Committee. TDs once again pored over the small stuff – travel costs, staff allowances, line items in briefing documents – and ignored the only question that actually matters.

What does the Government want RTÉ to be?

The State is RTÉ’s main shareholder, yet for nearly two decades it has refused to address the issue at the heart of the current crisis.

The TV licence has been frozen at €160 since 2008, for 18 years. In the same period, the price of a stamp, set by another State-owned company, An Post, facing its own declining market, has more than tripled. The licence fee, meanwhile, has not risen by a cent, even as Ireland’s population has grown substantially, the cost of producing content has risen and the media landscape has been turned inside out. The licence fee looks increasingly archaic in this world of streaming.

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No commercial enterprise anywhere on earth could absorb an 18-year price freeze on its primary revenue stream while its costs keep climbing. Yet successive governments have expected this of the national broadcaster, all the while criticising it for its failure to thrive.

And not for want of advice. Former Minister for the Arts Catherine Martin established the Future of Media Commission, which reported in 2022 and made a recommendation to abolish........

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