Protect RTÉ licence data

Pat Rabbitte’s statement in the Irish Examiner about "licence fee evasion being an ongoing scourge" beggars belief, but also confirms just how far the Labour Party has drifted away from its core, human values and how lost the party is.

If there’s a scourge in this country it’s the corporatisation of a nation and the Government’s ongoing collusion with failed and failing banking systems. Billions of taxpayers’ euro have been pumped into this corporate corpse whilst taxes have been increased, state services have been reduced and bank enquiries white-washed.

RTÉ receives hundreds of millions of euro from the taxpayer every year and the State jails hundreds of Irish citizens for not paying their TV licence. There’s something very, very wrong here, but it’s about to get a lot worse. Legislation allowing An Post (or any corporate entity) access to customer subscription data has enormous data protection implications (in other areas) and very real possibilities for commercial abuse. This country has just had its minister for justice and it’s Garda chief resign over data protection issues so the record in Ireland Inc. is not great. Of course Sky, UPC and the rest of the providers will state data protection as being of paramount importance; what else would you expect from them?

How about a cost benefits analysis of the scourge? How much does it cost to jail 411 people, process 6,000-plus court cases and actually collect the licence fee? If, as Pat suggests, RTÉ loses €25-€30 million as a result of this ‘scourge’, why can’t RTÉ cut its cloth to measure and downsize, right size or rationalise further to the point where we’re not jailing our own people?

Irish people and government opposition parties should oppose this legislation. It has far reaching implications which are not apparent right now and further promotes the corporatisation of this nation.

Paul Feeney

Ballybay Road

Carrickmacross

Co Monaghan