An Post fails to prosecute half of all TV spongers

HALF of the people caught without TV licences were not prosecuted by An Post inspectors because it cost the company too much, a Government report revealed yesterday.

The figures, which appear in the Comptroller and Auditor General report on TV licence fee collection, are drawn from Dublin statistics, figures for the rest of the country being unavailable. Those who were brought to court were fined an average of €174 each but only 4% subsequently purchased a licence in the three months after the court date.

An Post, which has collected the licence fee since its introduction, announced yesterday it will cease collecting in 2006. The contract is expected to be tendered to private companies.

An Post is losing about €500,000 a year on the deal. It had a policy of not prosecuting all evaders due to "administrative and cost reasons", according to the Comptroller and Auditor General report.

Announcing its annual report yesterday, An Post chief executive Donal Curtin said TV licence evasion "doesn't sit well with the brand of An Post", and as a loss-making business he would question it. The company had operating losses of €43m last year, its annual report showed.

Mr Curtin wants An Post to get more money from the Department of Communications for collecting the licence fees.

There are an estimated 157,000 households which do not pay the annual €150 TV licence.

The report found the highest level of licence evasion is in Galway (23%), followed by Dublin (20%), Sligo (20%) and Cork (18%). The lowest is in Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin, and Bray, Co Wicklow, (11%). This could be linked to the variation in resources, with one inspector per 48,000 households in Galway, compared to one per 20,000 in Dún Laoghaire.

According to the Central Statistics Office, 99% of households own a television. Although the percentage of households evading the €150 licence fee has dropped from 16% in 1998 to 12% in 2002, this figure is high internationally. In Britain, 7% avoid paying the €180 BBC licence fee.

Communications Minister Dermot Ahern said reducing evasion rates would increase the "licence fee pot" for RTÉ. "That reduces the pressure to impose annual TV licence fee increases on law-abiding citizens," he said.

The minister is considering legislation which would require satellite and cable companies to supply lists of their customers to An Post, so they could be cross-referenced against people holding television licences.

Most of the 300,000 television owners An Post visited in 2002 confessed if they did not have a licence and 70% paid up afterwards.

"Clear evidence of the presence of a television sighting of a television through a window, sounds of a television operating in the background, or external evidence of a cable service connection or aerial make denial of the presence of a television difficult," the report said.