Catherine Noone (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I also agree with the point that was raised about the television licence. We need to consider radically how we approach the licence and its structure. The system is such that lads and ladies call around to people's houses to see whether they have a television or whether they are present before pursuing them through the courts over their television licence. There are much easier ways to address the payment of these fees and broaden the potential for other stations to cash in, literally. People do not necessarily watch many of these television programmes on their televisions nowadays but rather on hand-held devices. An innovation could be that the fee could be collected through the Internet providers, but that is politically difficult because it could be seen as a broadband fee. We nonetheless need to examine the issue of the television licence, which is the fundamental point that I took from Senator's Leyden's contribution.

On Senator Craughwell's point, one must always be careful with what one says about pay and conditions. We have denigrated the profession to some degree over the years, in the sense that we behave in a way that other businesses would not behave. There are simple ways in which we play up to the public image. None of us enters politics for money.