Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Perhaps I missed an announcement, but on the licence fee the concern is that one in seven people does not pay and so six out of seven are carrying it. There is huge concern, particularly for low and middle income households that there would be no increase in that fee and that the improvements would come by way of the €40 million that is not being collected. I do not know how accurate the reports are, but there is a company that is already involved in collecting licence fees in England and there certainly have been difficulties with it in terms of the methods it is using to collect money. Issues could arise from that. I would be concerned about a bunch of heavies going around to collect licence fees. We have seen this in other areas. Up to now it has been An Post. In general, it has been reasonably professional in how it has been carried out but I just wanted to flag that concern. We have discussed other options in this forum and in the Chamber. There are other methods that could be looked at that are used internationally and they should be examined carefully.

I know there is a difficulty with trying to tackle high wages at RTE because some of the people who are on the largest sums of money in RTE are contracting companies. That should be looked at. The idea of somebody getting €250,000 for a couple of hours on a Sunday morning does not wash with the public, particularly in light of the fact that we are asking the public to put in more money and asking for greater compliance. We want people to get value for money for their licence fee. We in Sinn Féin want a strong public broadcasting sector. It is important that we maintain, retain and improve it.

The key points are that we should ensure there is no increase in the licence fee and that we do try to improve compliance without using private contractors. There is also the excessive wages of a small number of people. It is a semi-State company. I know that there is a legal point made about these people being self-employed. That is also being used in the construction industry for a separate set of reasons, but in the case of RTE it appears to be used as a way to ensure that people are paid excessive incomes where they are not direct employees.