Even a judge has lashed out at ‘those freeloaders in RTÉ’, when processing prosecutions over broadcasting licence fees
Judge Anthony Halpin was about to begin processing the prosecutions of 159 people who had failed to pay their licence fee when he stopped to get something off his chest.
In a stunning outburst from his seat at Dublin’s District Court on Friday, he lashed out at “those freeloaders in RTÉ”, Ireland’s state broadcaster, urging its stars and senior executives who received “unconscionable sums of money” to “do the right thing”.
RTÉ, which like the BBC is funded partly by a licence fee, has been engulfed in a crisis over payments made to its presenters and its extravagant spending.
The judge was furious that those before the court “who are crippled with the cost of living, have to swallow this unpalatable pill of the licence fee when they see that such a source of income is squandered and abused”.