But sure it doesnt operate on a level footing with any other broadcasting company. It has huge funding from the state. You dont think there should be any oversight? A simple code of conduct and a bit of oversight is whats required. Unfortunately this is the result of years and years of poor oversight and people being left to run riot with the money and do whatever the fuck they wanted.
Even the fact that the extra 150g* they gave tubridy in the last couple of years cost 230g* cos they wanted it hidden should be enough to have them done. An extra 80g* to cover it up cos they knew it was wrong?
Was it the CEO today said the C&AG used have oversight of RTE finances and should have that responsibility again? Meanwhile @tallback and the lads think it’s common bidness practice there’s nothing to see here.
There should be oversight. But there’s 2 different things intertwining here. Any company that relies on Commercial Revenue / Sponsorship as a big income stream will always find ways to bring those sponsors to events / junkets as a thank you at a cost of a small fraction of what the sponsor is paying. This is just the norm in the private sector.
Should RTE not have done that with their sponsors? I believe that the spend is completely fair game. However the hiding of the spend in a slush fund is highly problematic and shady as hell.
The timing of this spend coming when they were implementing paycuts / redundancies gives the completely wrong look as well. But if you forensically examined the spend of every company when they’re going through redundancy / paycuts process you’d find the same.
The commercial model side of RTE appears to have worked very well. The problem is they are subsidised with public money. Going forward why does it need public funding at all?
They cant have it both ways, pissing money up the wall on “hospitality” then at the same time going to the politicians saying they havent got a pot to piss in
Client entertainment is common business practise. That is just a fact.
In a commercial organisation like RTE - which a huge inventory of ad space to be sold each year and massive revenue targets to stay sustainable - I’d be fairly surprised if it wasn’t part of their sales effort.
This is completely different to for example your civil service department where you’re given a bundle of money each year and just need to spend that. You don’t have to earn that money each year.
That’s not to say that all of it here is appropriate and the governance here seems to be all over the place but in and of itself client entertainment is not a scandal.
Politicians coming out with stuff like “RTE hosted a golf event for clients at the K-Club while they are considering the future of Lyric FM - what a scandal!” is just red-meat bait for simpletons.
I’m disappointed that you’ve bitten down hard on the bait because usually you’re a bit more nuanced.
I’d look at it the other way - they are desperately trying to grow the commercial revenue because with their (unionised/protected) cost-base and other obligations in line with an inadequate public funding system what else could they do.
The numbers here, in the overall scheme of RTE’s annual finances are relatively small.
It’s hard to see how RTE emerges out of this as a dual-funded organisation. Ironically this might be the thing that makes it a smaller more public-service broadcaster but with only state funding.
Places like Croke Park and the Aviva are full of Corporate Junkets every weekend at big matches.
This ‘client representation’ pays for itself many times over but Sheila and Nuala hate seeing ‘those fuckers up in Dublin’ enjoying themselves too much.
Here you go mate. You think its grand but you dont think its grand. Normal commercial rules should apply but they shouldn’t. You’ve both bases well covered.
Yeah, they justify it by ring fencing the budgets for different areas. While they may have been making loads of fuckers redundant because of the need to make overall cost savings, it doesn’t mean they didn’t have a ring fenced entertainment budget within that overall budget to bring a crowd of other fuckers on junkets.
Same but different…it used to irk me a lot in a previous role. You’d have to whinge, beg & campaign for a token pay rise because there was no/limited budget for salary increases but then you’d see the travel budget being battered for spurious overseas junkets or you’d get told there’s no salary increases but there’s a significant learning & development budget & we’ll pay for you to do a course. I’d be like…fuck off Nuala, I don’t want to doing shitty Risk Management course assignments at night, I want more money into my bank account every month.
Overall, I feel like I’m a victim of the RTE scandal as a taxpayer & I’ve been a victim in the private sector too. It’s a credit to my resilience that I continue on…unbroken, unbeaten, unbowed.
