Ms Debbie Byrne:

Last year, we collected €166 million in television licence revenue, representing a 1% growth year on year, and our aim is to steadily improve on that. There are two big infrastructural investments that will help us to do that. One is investment in the database, so that we know the number of houses there are and who lives in them, and the other is enforcement. The burden of proof is part of that and it is important that it is not against a household but an individual. We have a rolling one-year contract that will go to tender, which we welcome because we have not been able to put that investment in. Three independent studies carried out by the Department estimate that we would need to spend between €1.5 million and €2 million on the database and we could not certainly not commit such investment with a rolling one-year contract.

It is an important stream of income for postmasters, as it represents about €3 million. While it is an expensive business for An Post to run, given the 90 inspectors and so on, it is still a source of revenue.