It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a TV, you’ll still have to cough up.
A new Oireachtas report has recommended that the TV licence fee in Ireland should be replaced with a ‘broadcasting charge’ and that responsibility for its collection should be transferred to the Revenue Commissioners.
Included in the Report of the Joint Committee on the Future Funding of Public Service Broadcasting, published on Tuesday, is a recommendation that “the introduction of a non-device dependent public service broadcasting charge (household-based) is feasible, efficient and practical considering the increasing threats to sustainability of current licence fee revenues”.
The report comes after Dee Forbes, the Director General of RTÉ, addressed the government earlier this year to ask for a review of the Broadcasting Act and also to suggest an increase in the TV licence fee, which currently stands at €160.
The public service broadcasting charge would apply to all households and applicable businesses, “regardless of the device they use to access content,” which essentially means that a household would be liable to pay the charge even if they didn’t have a TV but were accessing content via another device.
The report says that the introduction of a charge “follows European best practice (including the United Kingdom and Germany) and should be actively considered, in conjunction with the other recommended measures to tackle the high level of evasion”.
Ireland’s evasion rate is estimated to be in the region of 14% (as of 2016), representing an annual net loss of approximately €35m-€40m. The United Kingdom, by comparison, has an evasion rate of 5% and Germany has an evasion rate of 2%
The report also recommends restoring TG4 to more sustainable funding levels, funding independent regional, local and community radio and TV and amending the BAI Sound & Vision Scheme to allow funding for a wider category of broadcasting to be supported.
You can read the report in full here.
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