Louise Byrne

speaker

598 appearances 8 recordings 4 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 13 Sep

Louise Byrne’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 8 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 2.

Appearances

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The Last Word with Matt Cooper · RTE Requires €65m Bailout In 2028, Broadcaster Says · 9 Jul 2026 podcast

So I think there's a lot of unanswered questions about what the future financing of the national broadcaster is going to become next year.

You would argue no.

And the point was made by Kevin Backhurst today that when their 2025 accounts are published, that it will record a surplus and that it recorded a surplus in their 2024 accounts as well.

However, he conceded during the committee, quite a lengthy committee, but he said that RTE will need public support.

funding, whether that is through the licence fee in its current form, whether that is through a reformed licence fee, some other kind of household charge or a broadcasting fee.

But unless RTE is going to narrow its remit, it needs substantial levels of funding.

And he said that RTE doesn't want to narrow its remit.

And like I said, they are appealing for that arrangement to be extended out past 2027.

He conceded at one point

that come 2028 they could need up to 65 million euro in funding from the government so they say they're breaking even but they're also highly highly reliant on state funding

There was a lot on the taxis, or less so the taxis, but more so the so-called limousines, which Kevin Backhurst insisted are not limousines, that they're just chauffeured cars that are picking up high profile guests for the Late Late Show and everything else that RTE are broadcasting.

But I think one thing that did come up and perhaps could have been interrogated a little bit more by the TDs, and I hope Albert doesn't mind me saying so,

was this question of RTE having to downsize.

And we know that recently it sold land on its Montrose campus for the development of houses.

Kevin Backhurst saying this afternoon that they're going to have to sell more land that it looks like they're going to downsize the campus even further and move to one end of the campus and sell off the other end.

And yes, that will give them one injection of cash.

But how long can that sustain them?

You know, you can't live on the sale of that asset

forever.

Mr. Baccaras was also talking about hard decisions that are going to have to be made.

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