Technological change may mean that the television licence fee system is becoming outmoded, says Minister, writes DEAGLAN de BREADUNPolitical Correspondent
THE GOVERNMENT is reviewing the television licence fee system in light of the high level of evasion and the fact that an increasing number of younger viewers are watching TV on their computers, Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources Pat Rabbitte has said.
In an interview with The Irish Times, the Minister said that, due to technological advances, a growing number of people were watching TV on a variety of platforms, such as desktop computers, laptops and i-Pads.
“Because of the convergence of technologies and the development that I suspect is most evident in younger viewers, I am looking at the entire suitability of a licence fee system and I’m looking at the efficacy of the collection system,” he said.
“What will come out at the end of that is up for grabs,” he added, stressing that, “I haven’t made up my mind on it yet.”
He was also concerned about the level of licence fee evasion, which was estimated at 15 per cent. The introduction of “perhaps some kind of household charge” to replace the €160 a year TV licence fee was under active consideration.
“I don’t want to scare the life out of the public. Whatever might emerge would be in lieu of the TV licence, if I go for that decision,” the Minister said.
He also said a Government commitment to transfer €10 million from the licence fee fund to TG4 instead of taking the money from the exchequer would be implemented shortly.
“I will be making legislative arrangements to do that before the summer recess,” he said.
Asked if he felt commercial channel TV3 should get a share of the licence fee, he said: “I think what they [TV3] are primarily interested in is what they call a level playing-pitch.
“They are absolutely essential to the broadcasting landscape and competition is good; there is pretty sophisticated regulation and they have raised issues with me.
“But I think the licence fee as it stands is really to support the public service broadcaster on whom there is an obligation that is not imposed on the private sector: the RTÉ Orchestra, the kind of issues RTÉ are expected to tackle, and so on, that TV3 wouldn’t look at.”
On the issue of internet broadband distribution, he said: “I hope in the immediate days ahead to launch a new rural broadband scheme that essentially is designed to identify the remaining areas, in rural Ireland in particular, that have been missed out.”
He added: “One of the areas that I am anxious about is to try to roll out broadband to the remaining second-level schools.”
As part of his department’s contribution to employment creation and the forthcoming jobs initiative due to be announced this month, he was working on an expanded retrofit insulation scheme. “We are going to launch a revamp of the entire retrofit area and that will be included in Michael Noonan’s announcement.”
The Minister hopes he will “be able to expand it outside of domestic and residential dwellings to public buildings”.
On the political reform agenda, he said the Government was “working apace” on its “huge” programme of reform. One of the issues that would be dealt with, particularly in the wake of the Moriarty report, was a “greater delineation of functions” for the secretary general of a government department, vis-a-vis the minister of the day.
“There are issues for which the Minister ought to be responsible and ought to know but there are executive and everyday managerial functions that ought to be clearly allocated to the senior officials in the department,” he said.
He expected the Bill on political contributions and corporate donations to be published “in the near future”.
Rabbitte said he had no regrets about his angry polemic against then-Fianna Fáil minister Pat Carey in a Prime Time interview at the time of the EU-ECB-IMF bailout last November.
“I don’t resile from a single thing I said. It’s not a good idea to get annoyed on television but it is the biggest thing that has happened to this country since independence.
“At some stage during the interview, the penny dropped with me that not only had Pat Carey and his ministerial colleagues spent the previous week denying the fact that we were handing over the macroeconomic management of the country to outside forces but he was conducting the interview as if nothing had happened and it was of little significance.”
Does he agree with the statement by Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn that the country is in receivership? “The fact of the matter is, power has drained away from the Irish Government to the troika in terms of macroeconomic decision-making and that has never happened since 1922 . . . It seems that Ireland is being used as a test-bed by the European authorities to contain a phenomenon that I regard as being a euro zone phenomenon.
“I am not denying that there was reckless disregard for the national interest by our banks but there was dereliction of duty by the ECB as well and recklessness by the lending banks and the proposition that Irish taxpayers should pay this price in full is neither fair nor feasible,” he said.
Asked how he and his Labour colleagues were getting on with Fine Gael in government, he said: “There has been an obvious collective determination to try to chart some pathway out of the difficulties that we’re in and that has, up to now anyway, attracted the single-minded focus of the Government, partly I think because the two parties understand that it is unthinkable that this Government should fail.”