RTÉ finances still stretched: Same old story

Some of the 30-year-old archive material published today shows how very little has changed and how very much has changed.

In early 1986 cabinet ministers Alan Dukes and John Boland opposed a £2 increase in the television licence fee because, they said, RTÉ had not done enough to “improve its financial performance”.

Thirty years later RTÉ’s finances remain a pressing issue, possibly even more pressing as the outside world intrudes and secures revenues once firmly within the orbit of our national broadcaster.