The cost of unpaid TV licences

Six EU member states have abolished the television licence. Six other member states never had a television licence, as many other countries outside the EU don’t.

Of the 16 EU member states who have a television licence, the €160 charge in Ireland is the sixth most expensive. But €60 of this subsidises ‘free’ television licences, not paid from central taxation and corporation tax, which RTÉ is liable for on the income it receives as a ‘grant-in-aid’ derived from the public.

Last year, 24% of the cost of our public service broadcasting was funded by central taxation to compensate for ‘free’ television licences.

The proposal of Communications Minister, Pat Rabbitte, to impose a universal public-service broadcasting charge is legalised plunder.

The loss of television-licence revenue, as a consequence of hardcore evasion, is €25m annually; RTÉ has amounted a deficit of €110m since the end of 2009, and TG4, which has sales slightly over €3m, obtains an annual State subsidy of €36m to break even.

Mr Rabbitte needs to abandon sophistry and the instinct to protect the vested interest of An Post, an agency under his authority. He must act in the interest of citizens and must not expect compliant taxpayers to directly subsidise freeloaders.

Despite distributing 405,000 ‘free’ television licences in 2012, An Post sold 23,000 fewer television licences than it did it 2008, despite the population of TV households expanding by 116,000.

In this period, cable and satellite companies recruited 283,648 customers, who signed direct debits for monthly fees. Last year, there were 1,389,648 households with a pay-TV service, compared to 1,065,142 who paid for a television licence.

Mirroring the 13½% reduction in the cost of television advertising announced by RTÉ, after its advertising revenue dropped by 43% since 2008, Mr Rabbitte ought to reduce the price of the television licence and remove the burden of compensation for unpaid licences.

Then, more television licences might be purchased, with an uptake proportional to that in the United Kingdom.

By direct debt, the licence would cost €140; for those who do not pay by direct debit it would cost €160, and those who decline both options should pay a fine of up to €1,000 and forfeit their televisions.

If the Oireachtas were to pass Mr Rabbitte’s proposal in its current form, a precedent would be set to introduce other hypothecated taxes: for example, to compensate for the financial delinquency suffered by cable and satellite companies, public private partnership projects, or public utilities that are deemed to be systemically important, or allegedly ‘too big to fail’.

Myles Duffy

Glenageary

Co Dublin