Shane Ross

But I think you'll find that...

No government here will allow a national broadcaster to collapse.

And that was always the great but unacceptable weapon which Kevin Backhurst wielded during those negotiations.

He basically was saying to them, OK,

Let us collapse.

What are you going to do about that?

And no government's going to do that.

So there's always going to be, in the future, some sort of RTE.

You and, you know, Newstalk and Today FM may kill it dead in effect, but there'll still be in existence a national broadcaster of sorts.

Yeah, I got cancer last year, the year before last.

And I had some fairly heavy chemo and radiotherapy.

And so, you know, chemo takes no prisoners.

It gets rid of the cancer, but it takes...

sometimes takes a few things with it, and it's done a bit of damage to my vocal cords, which are recovering, and recovering quite rapidly.

I mean, I suppose the three great institutions

untouchable icons, iconic institutions were the banks, the church, and maybe RTE.

And I was always a bit unhappy about RTE.

I had a bit of a complex about doing too much about them because my wife worked there and I thought she might lose her job if I did too much about them, which didn't happen.

And I'd been very interested in them.

For example...