Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 20 March 2024
551. Deputy Thomas Gould asked the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media the number of cancelled direct debits for the television licence in each of the months January 2022 to February 2024, in tabular form. [11760/24]
View answerAn Post, who are the statutory TV licence issuing agent, provides a number of payment options including direct debits, online payment, phone payment, over-the-counter payment at Post Offices, and TV Licence saving stamps. An Post notes that there is a long-term trend in licence holders moving to the direct debit payment channel. In 2012, 11.73% of TV Licences were purchased through direct debits and this had increased to 18.54% in 2022.
I am advised that according to An Post, there are a number of reasons why a direct debit arrangement is revoked or cancelled, and it does not necessarily mean that the household has decided not to purchase or maintain a valid TV licence. A licence holder may change banks, for example, and this can be seen in the spike in direct debit cancellations from April 2022 to March 2023 in the Table below, when Ulster Bank and KBC left the Irish market. In addition, a licence holder may have become eligible for a ‘free’ licence under the Household Benefits Package, administered by the Department of Social Protection. A licence holder may decide to move from direct debit payments to online purchasing, or another payment channel.
As mentioned previously, direct debit payments are trending upwards but online purchases are growing even more strongly, moving from 26.61% of purchases in 2012 to 45.20% of purchases in 2022.
With these caveats in mind, the number of direct debit cancellations from January 2022 to January 2024 is shown below. The final cancellation figure for the February 2024 direct debit monthly run will not be available until the end of March.
|
- |
2022 |
2023 |
2024 |
|
January |
580 |
1,044 |
823 |
|
February |
519 |
1,407 |
N/A |
|
March |
609 |
1,391 |
|
|
April |
620 |
623 |
|
|
May |
657 |
777 |
|
|
June |
864 |
1,656 |
|
|
July |
1,008 |
2,327 |
|
|
August |
806 |
1,632 |
|
|
September |
1,155 |
1,588 |
|
|
October |
1,176 |
1,198 |
|
|
November |
1,361 |
1,009 |
|
|
December |
1,376 |
707 |
An Post provides information on monthly direct debits sales and this information is shown below from January 2022 to February 2024.
|
- |
2022 |
2023 |
2024 |
|
January |
13,480 |
13,156 |
12,851 |
|
February |
14,196 |
14,411 |
13,549 |
|
March |
13,929 |
14,038 |
|
|
April |
13,817 |
13,672 |
|
|
May |
13,605 |
13,480 |
|
|
June |
14,634 |
14,703 |
|
|
July |
14,112 |
13,779 |
|
|
August |
14,839 |
13,852 |
|
|
September |
17,821 |
16,973 |
|
|
October |
18,531 |
17,059 |
|
|
November |
13,472 |
12,861 |
|
|
December |
13,345 |
12,922 |
|
|
Total |
175,781 |
170,906 |
The TV licence funds a broad range of public service content, enabling essential news and current affairs programming, as well as supporting the creation of a high quality content on culture, sport, entertainment, music and more. It supports not only RTÉ, but also content created and broadcast by many independent producers on a range of national and local broadcasters. As such it remains critically important that people continue to pay the TV Licence fee. It is not only required by law, it underpins availability of public service content which is of paramount importance to our democracy and society.
