Ms Breda O'Keeffe:

I am happy to comment on that issue. We met the British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC. It is comparable. The Royal Mail used to collect the fee in the United Kingdom a number of years ago, but there was a move from the Royal Mail to collection by an independent third party and the evasion rates reduced dramatically. Before the agent was changed, the evasion rate was in the mid-teens. The Department's calculation was that there was a 15% evasion rate in Ireland; it is around 6.5% in the United Kingdom. It is mentioned in the briefing document that the rate is lower than that in some of the Nordic countries.