In June 2020, RTE’s Director General Dee Forbes told an Oireachtas Covid-19 committee that the broadcaster’s total income was expected to fall by 35 per cent due to the impact of the pandemic on the station. Licence fee evasion, already at 13 per cent, would grow during this period she said, and there would be other costs as well. According to a report on the RTE website, “Apart from reduced income from both the licence fee and commercial revenue, she sites additional costs including increased news coverage, dedicated programming and new commissions.” Elsewhere it was suggested that RTE could lose…