Feargal Quinn (Independent)

The reason I propose this amendment is that we have a seriously dysfunctional method of collecting our television licence. The effect of it is to waste a large proportion of the money collected. That money is lost to broadcasting. A further effect is that a large and increasing number of people succeed in evading payment of the licence fee altogether. That creates unfairness and makes life more expensive for the majority of law-abiding people.

Since the licence fee was first collected in the 1920s, there has been no change in the approach to the manner in which it is collected. We still collect the licence free in exactly the same way we did more than 80 years ago despite all the changes which have taken place in the meantime. My amendment proposes that we take a fundamental look at the television licence fee and at how it is collected, and that we substitute our current way of doing things with a more efficient and modern way to achieve our objectives in this area. We need new thinking by a new set of people who will not carry any of the baggage of the existing players. We need people who will stand back from the current situation and devise a better way. I have no doubt a better way can be devised.

The television licence is a tax. Any taxation expert will tell one that a primary consideration with every tax is how much it costs to collect it. The ideal is a tax which, in effect, collects itself. The ultimate horror is a tax that needs a special, dedicated mechanism to collect it. It is horrific because that way is always the most expensive way to collect a tax.

My amendment proposes that before creating a new arrangement for collecting the television licence, we should look around the world to see what lessons can be learned from experience in other countries. One such country is Cyprus which has a delightfully simple way to collect its television licence. It is added to everybody's electricity bill each billing period. In effect, collecting the licence costs virtually nothing. Compliance is not the issue since people must pay their electricity bill or their power is cut off.

There is another feature of the Cypriot system which we might consider adopting. Instead of a fixed amount being collected for the television licence — in other words, everybody pays the same amount — they levy a certain proportion of the cost of one's electricity bill. In that way, they ensure better off people, who presumably spend more on electricity, also pay more for their television licence. There are attractions to this approach but it is quite separate to the fundamental characteristic of the Cypriot approach which is to roll together the collection of the television licence and the electricity bill.

The reason this makes sense is that these days, ownership of a television set is virtually universal. There is not 100% ownership but I gather it is probably 97%. That is why we should concentrate on the very few exceptions, namely, the few people who decide not to have a television. We should make them apply for the exemption from the television levy. For everybody else, we should assume they have a television and charge them accordingly instead of wasting a large amounts of money on detection vans and on schemes to find those who seek to avoid paying. The majority of people would greatly prefer a better and more efficient way to collect the television licence because it would make significantly greater funds available to be spent on broadcasting. In the interests of all those working in the industry, we should push for such an approach.

I purposely used words such as "shall have special regard to". In other words, I am not saying we have to do this but it is something at which we should look. There is much validity in this approach. Having worn an An Post hat in the past, I would be regarded as somebody who is being disloyal to it if it is no longer being given the job and the licence fee is to be added to the electricity bill. It is not a solution to say it is being done by somebody at present. If it is not the most efficient way of collecting the licence, we should find a more efficient way to do so. My amendment is worthy of consideration and I look forward to the Minister's reply.