Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We are not going to introduce a digital tax. Ireland is a hub for digital and we have huge investments and huge numbers of people working in digital and tech. I do not want to undermine that by imposing a tax on them. There are levies for regulation but that is a different thing. We have also provided emergency funding to RTÉ, precisely because we want to protect employment there and continue to fund public service broadcasting but I accept that is not sustainable into the medium term. We will make a decision on a new funding model this year. It will either be a household charge collected by the Revenue or Exchequer funding, and we will make that decision this year. In the meantime, the TV licence remains the means by which public service broadcasting is funded. It is not just about RTÉ. It is the law and I encourage people to comply with the law.

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