Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 25 March 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Context Phase

Mr. Harry Browne:

I think it is really likely that we cannot rely on the private commercial institutions to do the job anymore because of the fundamental unravelling of the business model that has sustained them. Short of a perfect society, I think that some mix of market and public support is necessary and important. We see it in Finland, for example, and people are always citing Scandinavian examples. There are hundreds of euro per capita spent on direct and indirect subsidies to publications. So not only can we talk about licence fees to public broadcasters, we can talk about, as already exists in Ireland, lower tax rates for newspapers - VAT on papers is low here for example.