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

The current position is the TV licence is the law. I encourage people to pay it, as I do and always have. It is not just about RTÉ; it is about Irish-language broadcasting, public service media, children's programming and the broadcasting fund, which supports many broadcasters and creators in the private sector who have their own small businesses. We need to bear that in mind when deciding whether to pay the TV licence fee.

It is linked to television at the moment but that is old-fashioned. I know there are people who have suggested it be linked to having any sort of device but I do not think that is any more practical, quite frankly. The possibility of applying it to households could make sense and that is the proposal the Social Democrats as a party are making, although I think we would still need to exempt pensioners and very low-income households because it would be very regressive otherwise and I think the Deputy is agreed on that too. As any change will require legislation and will requires a system to be set up, there will not be a new system this year and the licence fee will continue to apply at least for the entirety of this year. We have to consider all of those options.

In terms of a levy on social media companies, I am not sure that is a great idea. We already have a levy that is going to fund the media commission and that is due to be imposed on digital companies. We already have VAT on broadband, for example, and we have corporate profit taxes, which are being increased this year. There are already a number of taxes there and I am not sure it would be the right approach to add additional tax on top of that.

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