Independent TV production companies have said they cannot access over €14 million of licence fee funds set aside a year ago by the Government.

For the first time in the State's history five per cent of the TV licence fee is now placed in a fund for special radio and television programmes.

The fund can be accessed by commercial broadcasters, as well as RTÉ. The commercial broadcasters and RTÉ are likely to commission the independent sector after drawing money down from the fund.

The concept was included in the Broadcasting (Funding) Act 2003. This legislation was sponsored by the then Minister for Communications, Mr Dermot Ahern.

The Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) has been given the job of drawing up a scheme to disperse the money.

But Screen Producers Ireland - which represents the independent production sector - said because of delays there was little chance of any money being allocated for several months at least.

"The BCI are now stating that it could be February at the earliest but more likely to be around Easter, 2005, before companies can apply for funding under the scheme. By that stage, there will be in excess of €20 million sitting in the fund. We had originally been told that the scheme would be launched in September, then October, then December. It is crazy that it has taken this long to get it off the ground. Licence payers are not getting the programmes for which they have paid and programme makers and those working in the industry are perplexed by the delays," said Mr Malcolm Byrne, of Screen Producers Ireland.

He said the fund would soon contain double the budget of the Irish Film Board and equal the State's annual contribution to TG4.

"We fully supported the establishment of this fund and want it to succeed but the question of whether it is appropriate for a regulator to be engaged in commissioning content must be asked. For the BCI to be deciding on television programme making is rather like ComReg providing telecom services," he said.

A BCI spokeswoman, however, said legislation setting up the fund had only been enacted last December and the money had been placed in the fund since then.

She said because public money was involved, a seven-month public consultation phase had to be gone through. The fund would also need ministerial and EU approval.