Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

On Tuesday last, the Government approved an increase in the television licence fee from 1 January 2008 at my request. This increase follows an independent review by Indecon consultants of RTE's performance in 2006. The review is an annual exercise undertaken to assess RTE's output commitments and its progress in its change programme.

The Indecon report concluded that RTE had exceeded most of its output commitments such as its objectives in broadcasting output and financial managements. It also progressed well in its change programme, including restructuring and change management. Overall, the report concluded that RTE was providing value for money for the Irish taxpayer. Details of the report will be made available on my Department's website shortly.

This increase will bring the cost of a television licence from €158 to €160. This modest increase will allow RTE to continue to strengthen the schedule it delivers in increasingly competitive television and radio markets.

To date the annual reviews to which I have referred have been carried out by independent consultants engaged by my Department. It is my intention to renew and reinvigorate the current annual process. There must be an increased focus on value for money, cost management and more precise and structured performance indicators aligned to high quality, high impact public service broadcasting. I will be asking RTE to engage fully with my Department as we re-engineer and strengthen the process so that the qualitative aspects of measuring RTE's performance are brought more to the fore.

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