Many would consider RTE's request to the Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands for a £50 increase in the TV licence fee a bold move. In the past year, the Irish broadcaster has been weathering an avalanche of public and professional criticism of its TV service, particularly over its millennium schedule and financial losses of nearly £17 million in 1999.

However, while RTE's public relations team may have a serious battle on its hands to convince the Government and the public of its case, it is widely believed among those connected with the industry that the TV licence fee should be increased. The real issue appears to be the need to define what the station's role as public service broadcaster means today.

In the forthcoming Broadcasting Bill, which is currently at the committee stage, a definition is given of public service broadcasting which RTE says it satisfied with. It is defined as a service providing virtually universal coverage which is free to viewers and listeners at the point of reception and provides a comprehensive programme schedule.

In their October submission to the Department for an increase in the licence fee, RTE stated: "Public service broadcasters have obligations that do not fall on commercial broadcasters and they give a different kind of service because they are not profit motivated." The station maintains that it cannot continue to provide such services if it is forced to compete with a growing number of rivals for diminishing commercial income.

At present, the licence fee - at £70 per household per year - is one of the lowest in Europe and is equivalent to 19 pence a day. This compares to up to 95 pence a day charged by daily newspapers. In addition to the licence fee, RTE also receives money for broadcasting commercials.

Currently, the licence fee accounts for just a third of RTE's £180 million income; a situation the station believes "could lead to programming decisions being disproportionately influenced by commercial considerations". The previous government put a proposal that would have index-linked rises in the licence fee with inflation, but this Government scrapped this plan.

A licence fee increase will be worth approximately £56 million a year to RTE and it has detailed how the extra £50 would be spent on a whole range of services, particularly in preparation for digital terrestrial television.

TV3 doesn't get a cut of the licence fee. However, TV3 could support an increase in the licence fee, but not until certain core demands are met, according to Mark Deering, the station's director of regulatory and legal affairs. These include a clear definition of RTE's public service broadcasting remit and a system to enable a third party to measure the organisation's success in fulfilling that remit.

And these aren't just words. In March 1999, TV3 filed a complaint to the competition directorate of the European Commission on this issue. Interestingly, the Commission is currently investigating similar claims of market distortion made against the French and Italian authorities in respect of their public service broadcasters.

"There are variety of ideas as to what constitutes public service programming, but our main concern is that it can be objectively quantified and objectively measured," says Deering. He says that RTE is spending licence fee revenue in such as way as to distort competition in their favour. He cites the example of TV3's bid to buy Coronation Street.

"If we made a bid, they could up it by 5 per cent or 10 per cent, because of the fact that they have the licence fee to supplement their commercial income and we survive solely on commercial income. The only way we could compete in terms of programme acquisition was to allow the producers of Coronation Street, Granada, to take an equity stake in TV3."

Deering defines public service broadcasting as "that which the market doesn't provide". In other words, religious, minority, wildlife and other types of programming that may not otherwise be produced.

"I'm not entirely sure whether you will ever get a definition which would be agreeable to everybody," says Michael Foley, lecturer in journalism at the Dublin Institute of Technology and media commentator.

"It might be to TV3's benefit for RTE to have a narrow public service remit, but it's a television service that is funded by the viewers, that's free to air, universally available, and reflective of the particular approach of this country," says Foley. "Having said that, it doesn't preclude them from showing the next series of Friends."

RTE is being asked not only to provide that which other stations will not provide, they are also asked to be popular as well. "If viewing figures drop below a certain level, someone will pop up and say `well if no-one wants to watch this, why are we paying for it?' "

RTE public affairs manager Deirdre Henchy insists that RTE would have no difficulty with the argument that there should be greater transparency in licence fee expenditure, but says that attempting to put clear blue water between that and expenditure funded by commercial income would be problematic.

"In small economies such as Ireland's, while it's all very well to talk about dual funding, the reality is that splitting up income into that which is commercial and that which is licence fee is very often not sufficient to run a coherent service," says Henchy.