TV licence fee revenue drops by over €1m so far this year
REVENUE from TV licence sales was down by over €1million in the first seven weeks of the year, bringing the total losses to €20million since the RTÉ scandals broke last year.
So far 128,000 licences have not been renewed in the past eight months since a series of controversies arose in Montrose.
In the first two weeks of February over €500,000 was lost in revenue due to non-payment of the TV licence as details of the independent reports into Toy Show The Musical and redundancy payments to the former chief financial officer dominated the headlines.
Another €516,000 was lost last month. However, in the final week of January TV licence fee sales recovered for the first time since the scandal began, rising by €400,000 compared to the same period last year.
However, sales plummeted again in early February when RTÉ found itself hauled before Oireachtas Committees once again.
A report into Toy Show The Musical showed that €2.2million was lost on the project that did not have board approval and only sold 11,044 tickets despite needing to sell over 75,000 to break even.
Another independent report revealed that a €450,000 redundancy package to a former CFO at RTÉ was never signed off by the Executive Board of RTÉ, and was not compliant with the station’s redundancy scheme.
The crisis in RTÉ deepened this week with Director General Kevin Bakhurst coming under pressure from politicians to reveal exit packages awarded to executives who resigned at the height of the scandal under his watch.
Mr Bakhurst told politicians on the Oireachtas Media Committee this week that he couldn’t predict how licence fee sales would recover this year. He added: ‘The trajectory of the last three or four months has been a steady improvement in people paying the licences for which we’re very grateful. However, last week was not so good.’
The Government agreed to give RTÉ a €56million bailout before Christmas after Mr Bakhurst said it would be insolvent by ‘early spring’ this year due to the shortfall in TV licence fee revenue.
‘They [the Government] have pledged €40million and we need to see how much of that RTÉ will need. We do not want to take any more taxpayer money than is necessary. If TV licence sales continue to improve as they have done we may not need that full amount.’
A spokesman for RTÉ confirmed that the station is resuming advertising on non-RTÉ channels and platforms on February 19.
RTÉ suspended all advertising around the TV licence fee on nonRTÉ channels and platforms in July when the scandal first arose.
The station has been continuously running TV licence ads on its own services in that time.
‘The trajectory has been improving’