Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

I accept the Minister's point that the television licence fee has served us well in some ways in raising money. However, if we know there are inefficiencies in place and there is something like an incentive to evade paying a television licence fee, then we have a responsibility to respond to that and to change the policy. I do not want us to abandon the existing mechanism until we have an agreed new system in place.

The Minister's concern with my amendment was that I was deleting the legal base for a continuation of the television licence fee. That is not the case. It states clearly at the end of my amendment No. 129: "Nothing in subsection (1) shall affect the existing mechanisms of television licence fees during the preparation of the report under subsection (1).". I am saying that we should leave the existing system in place, but let us force the timescale for a review. The Minister states that he is reviewing this and that if a better system comes up, he will look at it, but that is not a proactive way to deal with the issue. He knows that nobody out there will go to the time and expense of putting in place a watertight alternative revenue raising proposal to fund public service broadcasting in Ireland, unless he forces the pace on it. That is what my amendments are trying to do.

Everybody accepts that the current system is outdated, is not working as it should do and is too expensive. It would be great to tell households that we will reduce the contribution they make to public service broadcasting, because that is what we would be doing here. The 80% of those who are paying their licence fees are also paying for the 20% of those who are not paying them. We could have a system that would require all households and businesses to make a contribution towards public service broadcasting. In Greece, people pay their public service broadcasting levy via their electricity bill. There is no cost of collection, as the fees automatically get deducted. That may not be the most appropriate solution for Ireland, but there are solutions out there and unless we force the pace to find those solutions we will continue to drift along with a very inefficient system.

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