Lyric FM news staff who are due to lose their jobs in five weeks under proposed cutbacks have said regional services are being affected disproportionately.
Limerick-based Lyric news is the only broadcast service to be marked for closure across RT╔ as part of the aim to save £23.4 million. "The news service at Lyric FM is integral to the station's overall output and is central to its public service remit," say the station's staff. Five full-time and three part-time journalists are affected.
Meanwhile, cutbacks of £700,000 are proposed for TG4 and Raidi≤ na Gaeltachta, both of which have headquarters in the Connemara Gaeltacht.
Production in Cork will be scaled back, notably with the loss of Radio One World, the flagship medium wave service aimed at ethnic minorities.
The closure of the outside broadcast units service will save £5 million. Regional performances of the orchestras and choirs will be curtailed. Nationwide, a television programme with a strong rural emphasis, is to be cut from three to two showings a week and will be off the air during the summer. The Week in Politics is to end in June.
Lyric FM, the broadcaster's newest service, has to cut £555,000 from its annual budget which was £2.3 million last year. This includes the loss of its news division and temporary staff at a cost of £250,000. The station's journalists have lobbied politicians: "There is a direct link between the proposed job cuts and the lack of an adequate licence fee increase."
"We are the first and only news staff ever to be made compulsorily redundant," said journalist Ms Marian Malone.
Further savings of £305,000 will have to be made by station head, Mr Seamus Crimmins.
If the cuts are implemented, the news service will end on January 1st, four months short of its third anniversary. The replacement news service is expected to be taken directly from Dublin and read by Lyric's music presenters.
"Even the smallest local radio station has its own news service. What they are proposing is a 'rip and read' service as far as we can ascertain," said Ms Malone.
This would give a Dublin bias to news and omit the distinctiveness of the Lyric service, the journalists say.
Recent listenership figures show the station's audience grew to 4 per cent from 3 per cent last year. Mr Crimmins originally envisaged the figure growing to between 5 and 6 per cent. In 1997, RT╔ submitted a paper to Government outlining its hopes for a station of arts and cultural programming, arts performance, and arts news and analysis.
"They thought it was absolutely necessary to have a news service three years ago," Ms Malone said. She cites the recent Phonographic Performance Ireland Radio Awards where Lyric won "Best Programme in the Spoken Word" for an arts programme, Artzone, which the news team contribute to.
They are making representations to the Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, Ms de Valera.
She is also to appear before the Joint Committee on Heritage and the Irish Language on Tuesday after a Raidi≤ na Gaeltachta delegation claimed the proposed 8 per cent cut for that station, amounting to £300,000 together with a £70,000 loss incurred this year, was disproportionate, and that staff are paid less than their Dublin counterparts.
A RTE spokesman said last night that the cuts process involved a reduction of 160 jobs in the organisation and affected a wide range of areas. "We regret that the Lyric journalists' contracts are not being renewed but we will continue to provide a news service on Lyric FM."