Ms Triona Quill:

The levy will be based on turnover and there will be separate provisions. For example, broadcasters are already subject to a levy and that will continue and be incorporated within the new media commission. On-demand services will pay for the cost of their regulation and online services, such as video sharing platforms, will pay for the cost of their regulation. It will take account of the nature of the service being regulated and the turnover of those relevant services. There will not be any cross-subsidisation across the different types of services. Broadcasters will not have to cover the costs of regulating online services and vice versa.

The TV licence is not affected. Issues such as the TV licence are being looked at by the Future of Media Commission that is in place under the chairmanship of Professor Brian MacCraith. It is not being addressed in this legislation, though it is likely that the Future of Media Commission will report at the end of July this year on issues under its remit.

On who pays the levy, it depends on whether a service is designated by the media commission. That will be done on a risk assessment basis. The media commission will take account of criteria set out in the legislation such as the size and scale of the service, the number of users, the nature of the content that is on the service and how risky that is and so on. It does not mean that not every online service will be designated. There will be a risk-based approach to that. As new services become available, they will potentially come within the scope of this legislation. Again, the media commission will see how risky those services are, how many users are impacted and so on. We are aiming to future-proof it in that regard and we designed the legislation with that in mind.