Will RTÉ throw politicians a decentralisation bone?

Government Ministers were reluctant to say in advance what they wanted to see in RTÉ’s strategic vision document, but one thing Minister for Media Catherine Martin – who has now received a copy – did hint at last month was that she expected to see a “plan for the regions”.

The clear feeling in political circles – one that predates the eruption of RTÉ’s hidden payments scandal – is that its footprint is over-concentrated in Dublin 4 and that a spot of decentralisation would help it fulfil its remit as the “national” broadcaster.

As far as any potential financial upside to selling more or all of its Donnybrook site is concerned, RTÉ has run the numbers and concluded that the cost of doing a “lift and shift” out of Montrose – or a full rebuild of its broadcast infrastructure elsewhere – would outweigh the estimated proceeds.

Selling a further portion of its campus could still be in the offing. Back in 2017, when RTÉ sold 8.64 acres to Cairn Homes – a process that involved demolishing a creche and relocating the Fair City set – the next obvious target for sale seemed to be the land adjacent to the offloaded acres. That this included RTÉ Radio Centre did not seem prohibitive as the building was already falling out of favour, with RTÉ’s newest radio studio located at the heart of its campus in the television building.

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The logic of 2017 has since been compromised, however, by the subsequent listing of the radio centre and four other buildings on the site as protected structures.

Beyond these complications, it will be politically wise – though not revenue-generating, nor necessarily cost-saving – for RTÉ director general Kevin Bakhurst to include a prominent decentralisation theme in the plan set to be unveiled to staff next Tuesday.

A modest reallocation of resources to RTÉ Cork, where in-house programmes such as Today and Nationwide are produced, is one possibility. Certainly, it seems unlikely that there will be any attempt to shut down regional studios, as RTÉ’s former management mooted in 2019 with a controversial bid to move Lyric FM out of Limerick. Such retreats simply won’t fly either with the Cabinet or the chief grillers on various Oireachtas committees.

Indeed, the politicians most vocal about not giving RTÉ a so-called bailout are often one and the same as those most keen for it to show up to every ribbon-cutting in their constituency.