Government to blame for RTÉ chaos – not the departing chair

HOW lucky this Government was to have a chairwoman of Siún Ní Raghallaigh’s integrity and ability to steer the embattled RTÉ through rising storms.

She had created (with Cathal Goan) TG4, managed and reversed the failing fortunes of Ardmore Studios, and was instrumental in giving Troy Studios to Limerick – in other words is a person of proven judgment and broad-ranging experience. She knows what she’s doing. She is liked and trusted by people who work in television and film here and abroad.

I would like to think that those we trust in public service work just as hard, know their brief just as well, do their homework just as properly and have the courage to admit to shooting themselves in the foot. Sadly, in Ireland, we have a tendency among public and political servants, in moments of crisis, to circle the wagons and, shamefully, to forego truth in favour of defending a morally bankrupt status quo.

The Government was always ultimately responsible for the debacle of privately funded public service broadcasting. It is its job now to set this right without further silly defensive prevaricating. ... THE saga continues at RTÉ and shows no sign of coming to an end any time soon. What needs to happen, firstly, is the entire board of RTÉ has to be replaced. They failed miserably in their duty

Secondly, the new director general, Kevin Bakhurst, should consider his position and resign. He is part and parcel of the old order in RTÉ and his agreeing to so-called confidentiality agreements was a serious error. These agreements have no place in a public service body that relies, for the most part, on taxpayers’ money. We, the taxpayers, are entitled to know how our money is spent. And we cannot get this information because of these secret deals.

Yes, in a commercial company where sensitive information may be at stake, these agreements may apply, but certainly not in public bodies. Sweetheart deals at RTÉ should never happen again.

It still remains to be seen how the capping of these ridiculous salaries to second-rate, mediocre presenters will pan out, or will the DG give in to the pressure he is sure to be put under to maintain the status quo? Time will tell. Clearly, the gravy train for these millionaires should have arrived at its terminus by now. JC QUIRKE, Gormanston, Co. Meath.

Generous gesture?

MINISTER for Social Protection Heather Humphreys recently seemed rather chuffed with herself apropos to her kind offer of extending €140-a-month child benefit payments to parents of 18year-olds in full-time education.

With an election looming, one has to wonder if this extension of child benefit was nothing more than political expediency.

The minister’s reassuring words that this payment will now assist a lot of parents and students to buy the essentials was so benevolent and generous of her.

However, I am sure that some cynics might posit the notion that top of Heather’s list of essentials might be their votes.

I find that phrase: ‘There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch’ to be relevant to what some sceptics might see as undergirding and buttressing the minister’s motives, in that this phrase suggests things that appear to be free will always have some hidden or implicit cost to someone, even if it is not the individual receiving the benefit.

But then, maybe it was an entirely altruistic act on the part of the minister.

In any case, well done to Minister Humphreys on being such a prescient and lateral-thinking politician. After all it was the late UK prime minister Winston Churchill who once commented: ‘Politics is not a game. It’s an earnest business.’