Michael McDowell: Inefficient, expensive, exasperating TV licence regime needs overhaul

The issue of TV licence fees has cropped up again in circumstances where it cannot be kicked down the political road in the way it has been over the last 15 years. Opinion polls suggest that the public is now increasingly determined to withhold payment of the licence fee as a protest at recent events.

So, will politicians in the run-up to an election finally and firmly grasp the nettle of funding something which most of us value – public service broadcasting, however defined? The issue simply can’t be kicked past the life of this Dáil.

The statutory basis for licensing TV originates in the pre-TV era. The Irish Free State enacted a Wireless Telegraphy Act in 1926 which licensed both receivers and transmitters. Radios were usually referred to in common speech as “wirelesses”.

There was a general security concern that radio transmission had potential implications for the safety and authority of the State. Owners of radios had to pay £1 for a valve radio licence or 10 shillings for a crystal set in 1926. The cost of a radio licence rose to 30 shillings by 1971, and radio licences were abolished in 1972 – with the advent of movable transistor and car radios.

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By then a TV licence had been introduced at £7.50 in 1961 under the 1926 wireless telegraphy legislation, as amended. The cost of a TV licence (which differed for a while between colour and black-and-white TVs) has grown steadily to its present level of €160 per premises, with exceptions for those over 70 and certain classes of welfare recipients below that age threshold.

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A separate licence is required for each premises at which a TV is kept. This means that a worker who has a caravan in which his or her family spends a few weeks away from a modest home must buy two licences at a total cost of €320 (roughly equivalent to €600 in gross earnings for many workers). A wealthy family sharing a single large residence equipped with many TVs only needs one licence at €160. Is that fair?

With modern communications technology and in the era of iPhones and portable tablet devices, there is little or no sense in attempting to preserve a premises-based licensing system for TVs. This blindingly obvious conclusion has been staring the political class in the face for at least 10 years.

But successive governments have done everything to avoid facing up to abandoning the TV licensing system and raising the funding for public service broadcasting in some other way.

The Fine Gael/Labour government of 2011-2016 toyed with the idea of a premises-based public service broadcasting charge. The FG minority government from 2016-2020, with Richard Bruton as minister, said that a “device-independent” broadcasting charge would be devised and implemented from 2024. Where is it?

The current ludicrously inefficient, expensive and exasperating regime of licences, post offices, inspectors, scanners, court proceedings and incessant media advertising – “it’s the law: brought to you by the Government of Ireland” – seems to have run headlong into the buffers of public hostility and rejection.

It’s six years now since the Oireachtas joint committee with responsibility for broadcasting policy, of which I was a member reported, again recommending change. I proposed collecting a charge as part of a reformed residential property tax. I wrote here two years ago about the four-year delay in addressing that report.

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The ongoing paralysis is pathetic. A cynic might suspect that the current crisis will finally be used to break out of political lethargy to address what is really meant by public service broadcasting and how it should be subsidised.

The current licence fee is used to subsidise RTÉ and TG4. I do not begrudge its use for Lyric FM either. I wonder whether 2FM needs subsidy or State ownership to function in a crowded and highly competitive market.

I also wonder at RTÉ’s advertising strategies. Compared with satellite TV channels on the Sky platform, RTÉ’s ad breaks seem heavily dominated by State and semi-State advertising; promos for their own programmes; “RTÉ supporting the arts; supporting us” ads, and car advertising, rather than the type of Irish-market advertising carried by other channels. Did Covid-related advertising prop up a failing advertising strategy and an uncompetitive rate card until now?

I do not want to join the political institutional and personal pile-on. I unequivocally support State subsidies for public service broadcasting as an essential input into a healthy culture and democracy. I personally worked with many fine broadcasters on documentaries I presented without payment on issues such as church-State relations and history.

Politicians collectively share part of the blame for the present crisis. They didn’t turn a blind eye to exactly what has now emerged. But they funked the issue of financing public service broadcasting for far too long.