Government to reject advice to scrap TV licence fee

RTÉ gets around €200m a year from the licence fee. An additional €140m of its €340m annual budget comes from commercial activities such as advertising. Picture: Mark Stedman/RollingNews.ie

The Government is to reject a recommendation to scrap the TV licence and instead fund RTÉ through the exchequer.

The long-awaited Future of Media Commission report, which contains 49 recommendations around how the sector should be funded and reformed, will be published this week after it finally goes to Cabinet on Tuesday.

It is understood the report recommends that the national broadcaster receive a direct subvention from the State, which would replace the TV licence. However, the Government is "unanimous that this won't happen".

"Over 80% of people pay their licence and no one is going to cut off that source of funding," a senior Government source said on Sunday night.

While it had been suggested that Revenue could take over the responsibility of collecting the charge, this is now not expected to happen.

Database of non-payers

Instead, An Post, which collects the licence fee, will receive greater funding to identify the roughly 15% of households who do not pay the charge each year.

This will include funding to invest in more sophisticated IT systems and to develop a database to follow up on those who do not pay.

RTÉ gets around €200m a year from the licence fee. An additional €140m of its €340m annual budget comes from commercial activities such as advertising.

The report, which was sent to Government last year, also argues in favour of a Vat reduction on newspapers.

It stresses the importance of a pluralist media environment across print, radio, and digital for an open democracy and suggests that direct State funding be introduced for newspapers and local media.

A Government source said consideration for any new streams of funding would be all part of the budgetary cycle.