Mr. Rory Coveney:

It is both expensive to collect by international standards and is very poorly collected in terms of the number of people who evade it and the number who avoid it. The system of collection is in dire need of reform. That is even before the price is raised, increasing the burden on households from its current rate of €160 per annum. If the licence fee was being collected optimally, to European averages, would we be having this discussion? I do not know. Perhaps we would be, but RTÉ has had deficits for seven of the past nine years. We have made enormous cutbacks across areas of our output. In factual programming and television our investment has reduced by 38%.