Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his reply. The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, BAI, has recommended that €30 million of taxpayers' money be given to RTÉ. At the same time there is an evasion rate of between 14% and 15%, with approximately €40 million that needs to be gathered up. I do not want to see an increase in the TV licence fee, and the party I represent certainly does not. People are facing enough in terms of rises in the cost of living. This needs to be addressed. I am concerned that the Oireachtas committee went through the long process of putting a report in place. The committee had many witnesses appear before it and the report is in place. We disagree with the privatisation of the collection of the licence fee. Consider what happened in this regard in Britain with the BBC facing legal actions because they used private companies. I would argue strongly that the collection of the licence fee should be retained with An Post. The main recommendation of the Oireachtas committee was to hand the collection of the fee over to Revenue. It is noted in the report that we disagreed with that recommendation, but we proposed to put in place a scheme to pay at the point of purchase or registration. This process works in other countries and is very easy to collect the fee because everybody is in the net. The minute a person buys a television set or connects to a service or a platform then he or she is in the net and is in the database.

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