Professor Gillian Doyle:

In looking across the range of options, we considered whether there could be more reliance on commercial revenues. There are questions around having a heavier reliance on advertising because as we know, expenditures on television advertising are in decline. That money is migrating to the Internet and it is not coming back so some degree of reliance on advertising makes sense but not complete reliance. Another possibility is voluntary subscriptions from citizens. That option is being debated in many jurisdictions but has not been adopted. The problem is the way it might cut across the universality principle. From what we have heard, there are questions about whether a subscription model could work in Ireland. There are concerns that you could not raise enough money, or that you might end up with a service aimed only at the privileged. Then we are back to considering publicly funded options. We have talked about the licence fee and the possibility of a switch to a household charge. The other possibility is a government grant or direct Exchequer funding. That would allow you to tap into Ireland's very progressive income tax system and perhaps spread the burden across businesses too.

It is an approach which would remove evasion and promote universality. It also has the advantage of making income more stable and predictable. The snag is that it runs the risk of political interference. One would need strong safeguards to ensure independence from the whims of the government of the day. A number of variants of the government grant approach have been implemented across Europe in recent years as a way of moving away from the licence fee. There are various variant models in Denmark, the Netherlands and Finland. We have looked at all of those and are considering them.