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In the UK, nearly 2m households told the BBC they did not watch any live television last year

Much of the heat over the long-delayed Future of Media Report has been generated by the rapid dismantling of its core, and most controversial, proposal... that RTÉ’s licence fee reliance should be scrapped by 2024 and replaced wholly by “general exchequer funds”.

The defenestration of Commission on the Future of Media chairman Brian MacCraith, and his key suggestion, was quick, given the proposals were so long in gestation. Taoiseach Micheál Martin effectively said disengaging the State broadcaster from the licence would not happen on his watch. And this will mean it doesn’t happen on Leo Varadkar’s either, when, as expected, he becomes Taoiseach. Whether anyone will want to go into the next election asking battered taxpayers to pick up even more of the tab for TV is unlikely.

The solution to this dilemma is the creation of a “technical group” charged with improving the yield from the existing arrangement. Yet there is a historic and unstoppable move away from levy funding by consumers from which we will not be immune. In the UK, nearly 2m households told the BBC they did not watch any live television last year, an increase of 270,000 over the previous year, producing lost revenues of nearly €50m. The BBC expects that figure to rise because of the cost-of-living crisis, while the rate of evasion has also rocketed. The British licence fee is €188 compared to €160 in Ireland. The Republic will be subject to the same trends.

Given current instability — cost of living, housing, continental war — this is not the moment to sow further uncertainty in the workings of the State broadcaster. But there are 49 other recommendations in the report affecting the broader panorama of the media which need to be ventilated and discussed quickly if they are to produce any meaningful action.

Diversity and inclusion

While some of them look suspiciously like box-ticking exercises — the requirement to audit “diversity” and “inclusion” for example — there are others which need substantial
explanation. How will the “local democracy reporters” be recruited and trained? How will coverage be “more comprehensive”, and how can “homogenous” reporting be avoided? Will attempts to ensure that courts are covered adequately be assisted by ensuring that supporting legal documents are made properly available in a timely fashion? How will the “National Counter-Disinformation Strategy” work in practice, and are EU policies necessarily founded on the same commitment to free speech that we enjoy in Ireland?

Media Minister Catherine Martin has asked for a report by November, four months away, on how best to implement the recommendations. That is a mighty task, and it is difficult to believe, on current experience, that this deadline will be met.

It goes without saying that Vat on newspapers and their electronic versions should be abolished. It is unconscionable that Ireland has been prepared to tolerate this tax on knowledge while other European countries take a more progressive view. That change should be implemented in the 2023 budget.

And here is something else the Future of Media Report should have recommended. The portfolio of responsibilities covering the tech-driven media fragmentation of the 2020s is too diverse and complicated to be subsumed in a portmanteau department embracing tourism, culture, arts, the Gaeltacht, and sport. This is a ministry with too much on its plate. Break it up now, and reallocate responsibilities. Technology and media are the driving forces of the era. Overseeing those is a good and challenging job for someone in high office. It requires full concentration.