RTE puts digital plans on pause due to budget pressure and Bill debate

RTE has abandoned its plan to begin digital television services in October, and will not now provide digital channels until early next year at the earliest.

The station's director of public affairs, Mr Kevin Healy, said yesterday financial difficulties and the continuing negotiations with the Minister, Ms de Valera, over the Broadcasting Bill were the reasons for the deferral.

"We can't start broadcasting in digital until the Bill goes through the Oireachtas. How these channels will be funded hasn't been decided yet either," he said.

RTE had planned to provide three digital channels before the end of this year, one of which was likely to be dedicated to news. However, Ms de Valera recently told the Dail that difficulties had arisen in relation to RTE's involvment in Digico, the company which will manage the digital transmission network. RTE and AIB Corporate Finance have also disagreed sharply on the value of RTE's existing transmission network.

Speaking at an Independent Radio and Television Commission conference in Killiney, Co Dublin, last night, Ms de Valera said RTE would be told in detail in the new Broadcasting Bill how it should spend its £63 million television licence income.

She said the Bill being drafted by her department would "provide for additional clarity and detail in statute law" on the uses to which licence fee revenues and Exchequer funding could be put by RTE and the Irish language station, TG4. Ms de Valera said the Bill would also "provide greater clarity as to what is expected in fulfilment of the public service remit which applies to RTE".

Mr Healy said last night that RTE would be happy to detail how it spent the licence fee. "It might well indicate the degree to which our commercial revenue is subsidising our public service output." RTE recorded a surplus of £5.94 million in 1998. Last year the station ran up a deficit of £9 million and the deficit for 2000 is likely to top £10 million, according to station sources.

Referring to the controversy over RTE's share in Digico, Ms de Valera said it was "premature to enter into debate about the material contained in recent newspaper reports". She said she hoped to "devise suitable amendments quickly so the Bill can proceed on its way through the Oireachtas with the maximum speed". The existing legislation was "rooted in an analogue broadcasting world" and "in a concept of broadcasting that regarded transmission as an essential element of the broadcaster's operations", she added.

Meanwhile, it has emerged that Ms de Valera's officials and members of the RTE Authority will not meet tomorrow to discuss the progress on the Broadcasting Bill, as had been planned last week.

Mr Healy said there was "nothing significant" in the fact that the meeting was now unlikely to take place until after St Patrick's Day.