Elaine Loughlin: As RTÉ debacle rumbles on, what other bombshells are passing us by?

Sat, 08 Jul, 2023 - 02:00

There are some who must be delighted with the cover that the RTÉ scandal has provided.

With journalists, politicians, and the general public obsessively tuning in to every twist and turn in the unfolding saga over at the State broadcaster, others have been dropping what usually would be bombshells, but which have barely made a thud.

It can be easy to get caught up in the drama of a controversy and this week the pace of developments in RTÉ meant that those following had to put significant time into it just to keep abreast of the plot.

Keyboards were steaming as journalists raced to report on emerging details — from the release of a tranche of documents late on Tuesday night; to revelations around a €2m loss made on Toy Show the Musical; the thousands spent on flipflops and fancy meals out of the three barter accounts; the extended grilling RTÉ heads got at the Media Committee on Wednesday afternoon; and then of course Marty’s car.

But elsewhere, the world continues to turn.

During the same five and a half hours that the Media Committee sat on Wednesday afternoon, the highly contentious mother and baby homes redress scheme was discussed for the final time in the Dáil before being sent to the President and a long-awaited bill to introduce safe access zones outside healthcare facilities that provide abortion services was also debated.

In the Seanad, important new offences around non-fatal strangulation and stalking were being examined while the Finance Committee was updated on continuing issues with the mica redress scheme.

And the Transport Committee was told of serious problems around the recruitment of bus drivers.

But the non-RTÉ news doesn’t stop there.

Since the Tubridy payments story broke just over two weeks ago:

the Government has decided to break its own budgetary rules;
the justice minister has gained powers for a de facto mass surveillance system of the entire population;
the health minister has dropped a free GP care commitment;
our world has heated up to record temperatures;
a damming scoliosis report into waiting times for children was published;
revelations in the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board sparked an urgent financial review; and
there has been confirmation of further delays with the National Children’s Hospital.

All have gone relatively under the radar, or certainly have not been discussed at length, as the drip feed of information around RTÉ’s barter accounts dominated the headlines and took up significant airtime.

It begs the question, what else has been shelved and what other issues are bubbling under the surface as RTÉ grabs all the attention?

Some €6.5bn is a fairly big wad of cash to hide — it’s the amount of extra money Finance Minister Michael McGrath and Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe have decided to splurge this autumn.

No one could accuse the two ministers of trying to bury their billions from the public.

But in comparison to the razzmatazz that usually surrounds the publication of the Summer Economic Statement (SEC), the Government’s spending announcement this week simply went off with a press conference on Tuesday and little more scrutiny.

The details of €5.2bn in extra expenditure and an extra tax package worth €1.15bn made it onto the front page of Wednesday’s Irish Examiner as a sidebar to RTÉ’s lead story.

The SEC which each year sets out the broad parameters for the upcoming budget, set out a package that is €1bn greater than the trajectory set out in the Government’s stability programme update (SPU), published in April.

It means that core spending will rise by about 6.4% in 2024, exceeding the Government’s own 5% spending rule, which given out already overheating economy should have sparked serious concern.

Then it's back to RTÉ...

But the following day in the Dáil it was again RTÉ which Sinn Féin’s finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty raised with the Taoiseach at Leaders’ Questions before being swiftly followed on the same subject by Holly Cairns and Richard Boyd Barrett.

One entity which did have something to say on the announcement was the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (Ifac) which took to Twitter to strongly criticise the Government’s plan to breach its own spending rule claiming it is a “clear case of procyclical fiscal policy”.

“The Government’s revised plans exceed those set out three months ago as well as breaching the spending rule. This repeats a pattern and undermines the credibility of the Government’s plans and the Spending Rule itself.”

The spending watchdog also took aim at the Government’s plan to take €2.25bn from corporate windfall taxes over the next three years on infrastructure projects, such as Garda stations and healthcare facilities that are shovel ready.

Ifac said that when this “windfall capital investment” should be accounted for properly as core spending as the approach taken by the Government is “bad for transparency”.

“When one correctly accounts for the additional capital spending, the Government is planning to break the spending rule every year out to 2026.”

One item that we know won’t be included in October’s budget is a further expansion of GP free care to children.

Health Minister Stephen Donnelly this week abandoned the Government’s commitment to provide free GP care to all children under the age of 12.

Of course, Mr Donnelly didn’t phrase it in that way, instead he announced that GP cards are to be extended to children aged six and seven as well as to adults under a certain income, before quietly adding that it would be “last expansion” of the scheme in the lifetime of this Government.

The roll out of GP visit cards to more than 500,000 people in the coming weeks, it has to be said, is a significant achievement for Mr Donnelly and will make a massive difference to families across the county.

But he also conceded that it is “big ask of general practice”, with surgeries already struggling to see patients and get any sort of relief themselves.

It perhaps explains why a further extension will not be on the cards in the next two budgets that this Government possibly has left.

“They know it’s a big ask. There’s never been an expansion like this before. And so, this will be in the in this Government, this will be the last expansion in terms of GP cards,” Mr Donnelly said.

The provision of free GP care to all children under 12 had been more than just a political promise; the measure has been legislated for, but the decision to abandon it barely made a blip when it was dropped on Tuesday afternoon.

A spokesperson later said that the Government is committed to the delivery of GP care for all children up to the age of 12 in phases, but those phases are likely to come too late for aged-out children.

What else has been quietly announced in the past fortnight?

In the Dáil, the Taoiseach said the drip feed of information coming from RTÉ is doing “untold damage”.

He was referring to public trust in the organisation that has been eroded, but the impact could extend far wider than Montrose.

It can be easy to look back on historic scandals and ask how did no one stop it at the time?

Why did nobody spot what was going on? The RTÉ controversy goes some way to explain how eyes can easily be taken off the ball.

Harris: We need RTÉ to get back to commissioning drama, not being the drama