Letters to the Editor: TV licence payers and viewers want real reform at RTÉ

One reader queries RTÉ's 'new direction', while others consider issues including racism, energy prices, and the risk of bird flu 

According to one reader, most public ire about the RTÉ saga was directed at former director general Dee Forbes and her executives rather than at Ryan Tubridy. Picture: Niall Carson/PA

You pose the question “How many people do you know who say that they “never” watch TV?” (Irish Examiner Editorial, January 15).

I can say over the last number of years, even from a telly addict’s point of view, many are not watching television. Yes, the definition of TV needs to be expanded, but I can also safely say that it is only out of interest in the media that I ever venture over to the RTÉ Player, usually just to look at credits for dramas that RTÉ have seemingly co-produced.

I do not think there is wholesale flight from the medium. I believe that the vast majority of people who decided not to renew their licences are in favour of public service broadcasting, but the mismanagement of our national broadcaster caused them to evade the licence fee. A decision I don’t believe they took lightly.

Their decision comes not only from clear mismanagement of the public service broadcaster but also due to their dissatisfaction with the services provided by the national broadcaster over the last decade or more, while management begged for more money.

I do not think that Ryan Tubridy was catching the most of the icy blasts of the public. I believe that he got a cold reception from the media who assumed that he was the face of the public’s anger. No, the icy blasts of the public were clearly directed at former director general Dee Forbes and her executives of whom three resigned due to the shenanigans.

Over the last decade, Irish people have considered what the media landscape might look like in 2024. For most of that period, Dee Forbes and Moya Doherty (the former chairwoman) seemed to think the running of the national broadcaster was out of their control due to an “existential crisis”.

We now know that the broadcaster continually failed to make any progress on the problems facing the organisation from within. How could a management team honestly change a company that was only too willing to provide them with €25,000 in annual car allowances and many other benefits? Changing RTÉ would be like Dustin the Turkey voting for Christmas.

RTÉ’s “new direction” is just to continue to enunciate how little they have while continuing to live the high life. The audience and licence fee payer wants real reforms not more of the same.

Éamonn Geoghegan, Westmeath

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Personality politics

Being retired, I have plenty of time to read the papers and enjoy doing so. I particularly enjoy the broad coverage the Irish Examiner gives to the political scene. 

One reader wants to know more about individual TDs such as Michael Healy-Rae. Picture: Dan Linehan

Having said that, it might add to the picture if you gave a little coverage to the personalities and oddities of the individual TDs.

For example, does Michael Healy-Rae take off his cap when he is taking a shower? Why does the Labour TD call himself A Yawn O’Riordan? There must be others. Let’s have them.

Brendan Casserly, Bishopstown, Cork

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We cannot ignore xenophobia

As an Irish person with a familial history of emigration, I observe the increasing level of xenophobia towards vulnerable men, women, and children with great sadness and utter despair.

It evokes painful memories of life in the UK in the late 1950s and early ’60s when anti-Irish discrimination was rampant, and it was not uncommon to see signs, articles and/or banner headlines articulating the more personal verbalisations of daily face-to-face interactions.

I wonder if those individuals who protest at Government-designated sites of refuge have relatives, including single young men, who have experienced the forced emigration of a boom-and-bust Irish economic cycle where they were forced to confront hostility and resentment?

If so, how can they in all honesty maintain that there is no undercurrent of xenophobia, which in all likelihood is engendered through social media racism of the most horrendous kind?

Kevin McCarthy, Killaloe, Clare

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Intensive factory farming is a disaster waiting to happen

In the midst of the various crises currently unfolding, from famine to war and all the way up to existential planetary concerns, we hardly need a new global pandemic coming at us. Yet we are firmly set on a course that is, on a daily basis, increasing that risk.

The latest outbreak of the highly pathogenic avian influenza (bird flu) reached North America in December 2021 — in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. Subsequently, viruses have been confirmed in wild birds, backyard flocks, commercial poultry facilities, and wild mammals in both Canada and the United States.

Detections of avian influenza in mammals were recorded in 2022 and 2023, including seals, skunks, mountain lions, red foxes, raccoons, and even a bottlenose dolphin. Many more mammals are expected to join this growing list over the coming months.

On December 6, Alaska’s state veterinarian confirmed that a polar bear had died from avian influenza, in what is believed to be  the first recorded case of a polar bear dying from the virus. Scientists and scientific bodies are at pains to reassure the public that avian flu poses little or no threat to humans. Yet those same scientists understand that the more prevalent a virus is, the greater the chance of mutation, and with a rapidly mutating virus, no one can predict the outcome. Put simply, the more mutations there are, the greater the risk of animal-to-human transmission, the next step being human-to-human transmission.

No one disputes the fact that factory farms are breeding grounds for viruses. Because of the way we are now farming animals intensively, once disease enters the closed environment, it spreads rapidly among the immunocompromised animals inside. With tens of billions of animals — mainly chickens and pigs — crammed into sheds together all over the world, including here in Ireland where 100m birds and 3.5m pigs are raised in sheds each year, it is surely only a matter of time before another serious zoonotic event occurs.

By moving away rapidly from the factory farming model of animal agriculture, we are at least reducing the risk of future pandemics, and surely that is a no-brainer.

Gerry Boland, Keadue, Roscommon

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Electricity price cuts

In the middle of one of the coldest winters, with a cost of corporate greed crisis pushing more people into homelessness since the Famine, Electric Ireland announces price cuts. Fantastic news right? Except the price cuts don’t begin until March, when the worst of the winter will be over. How hypocritical and cynical.

As many observers have said, electricity prices should never have risen to the levels they are at. 

Electric Ireland and other energy companies have boasted record gluttonous profits. However, some news outlets have greeted Electric Ireland’s price cut delay with undeserved enthusiasm. Reading Conor Pope’s consumer analysis in The Irish Times, you would mistake much of it for an Electric Ireland press release. Pretending that a 8% cut to electricity prices is good news, when they’re the ones responsible for increasing the prices with no justification, and the prices are still 85% higher than February 2022 and the start of the Ukrainian war (which, of course, had absolutely nothing to do with the cost of producing electricity) is farcical.

We should take such publicity announcements with a grain of salt, and demand a cut to energy prices to cost price only, immediately. Anything less will condemn people to deprivation and misery.

Patrick Connolly, Clonmel, Tipperary