13,700 in court for failure to pay TV licence fee

More than 13,700 court cases were brought against people for non-payment of the television licence fee last year.

Mon, 30 Mar, 2015 - 01:00

John Fallon

Almost 21,000 summons applications were made by An Post, which is responsible for collection of the fee on behalf of the Minister for Communications.

Of these, 13,709 proceeded to court, where penalties for non-payment of the €160 charge can include a maximum fine of €1,000 for a first offence and €2,000 for subsequent offences.

More than half of the court cases (7,066) related to prosecutions in Dublin, while Cork had the second-highest number of cases at 690, followed by Tipperary at 652.

Roscommon had the lowest number of court cases for non-payment (39) in 2014, while the number in Donegal (88) and Westmeath (88) also failed to exceed treble digits.

There is considerable variance in the number of TV licence inspectors and administrative staff operating for An Post in each county.

Nationally, 46 inspectors and 41 administrative staff are employed by An Post in the area of licence sales, detection and administration. Twelve licence inspectors and 25 administrative staff are based in Dublin, while 12 counties operate without administrative staff.

An Post employs five licence inspectors in Cork, two in Donegal, Galway, Kerry, Limerick, Louth, Tipperary, and Waterford; and a maximum of one in every other county.

Cavan and Monaghan share one licence inspector, as do Sligo and Leitrim; while Wexford and Wicklow share two inspectors and one administrative staff.