Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 18 Nov 1980

Vol. 324 No. 4

Adjournment Debate - Television Licence Fees

Mr. Enright

I should like to thank the Ceann Comhairle for allowing me to raise this matter on the Adjournment. Television licence fee increases are necessary because of the financial situation RTE find themselves in. The station is currently facing a loss of something in the region of £600,000-£800,000 a month. This is a very serious situation and one that cannot be allowed to continue. RTE were faced with two choices. One was to cut back existing services and the other was to increase licence fees. We on this side of the House would be totally opposed to any cut back or diminution of RTE services. We would be anxious to give the station every encouragement and assistance to expand if possible. It is a national service and it is important that the people involved in it are happy in their work and in the knowledge that there will be no cut backs.

The second choice was to increase fees and that is what has occurred. The Government consented to an 18.5 per cent, or £7, increase for a colour set and 17.5 per cent increase for a black and white set. These increases are necessary and I admit that. They are necessary because there are over 90,000 people who have unlicensed television sets. Of that figure I understand that somewhere in the region of just under 70,000 of those sets are colour which is an indication that the people who purchase them are not that badly off. The remaining 20,000 sets are black and white.

The present cost of a colour television licence is £38 and if these 70,000 sets were licensed the revenue that would be brought in would be £2½ million. That would be more than what will be brought in by the 18.5 per cent increase in licence fees. The increase will bring in £2¼ million, although the Government say it will be £3 million. There would be additional revenue if the remaining 20,000 black and white television sets were licensed as well. The position is that either through negligence, apathy, laziness or a combination of all three, the Government have failed to take any effective action on this front and have failed to curb the situation.

There are occasional efforts made by the Government, such as the TV spongers campaign, about once a year to try to bring in revenue but there should be a constant effort by them to ensure that everyone has a licence for his television set. In many instances there are poor people who are paying licence fees and are subsidising well-off people who have not bothered to get a licence. It is wrong and the Government should have taken action long ago. An advertisement on TV states that people will be brought to court and if they are convicted for not having TV licences their names will be published in the newspapers. I read a lot of local newspapers and I do not know when a person was brought to court for not having a licence. The Government should conduct a campaign to ensure that people pay licence fees at all times. It is vitally important.

RTE have had to cut off some Irish programmes because of their financial position. These programmes were Irish made, enjoyable and involved many Irish actors, producers, technicians and so on. We are now faced with more imported canned programmes. Some programmes that are at present on our national television service are of such a low standard that if they were put on in a hall, theatre or lounge bar in a country area they would have to close after a few nights if the proprietor had not the sense to recognise their poor quality.

If the Government had taken the initiative in this regard and ensured that everybody paid his licence fee there would be many more programmes produced here. There are many aspects of Irish life which are not presented on RTE because RTE are curtailed in what they can do. We have some brilliant comedians and performers. Many of our people are top class in their spheres. It is only on an annual basis that we see many of them on television. Some of them are Maureen Potter, Des Keogh, Rosaleen Lenihan——

Mr. Killilea

J.R.

Mr. Enright

Rarely if ever do we see many of these people on television other than on Christmas Day. A lot of talent is available in this country which never gets an opportunity to be seen on our national television services. This is something which the Government must tackle and the revenue must be made available for promotion of such programmes. "The Riordans", one of the finest programmes that I can remember seeing and was most enjoyable, was dropped from television some time ago. It touched on many important social aspects of not just rural Irish life but all aspects of Irish life. It incorporated many delicate matters and matters which people shied away from and it was an in-depth study of life in Ireland. I am certain that the cost factor had a lot to do with the removal of this programme, but it was a mistake to remove it and this is evident when we see some of the programmes that replace it on the television service.

The Government have a major responsibility to ensure that the Authority have the necessary financial resources so that our people who are involved in the broadcasting service, the theatre and many other such aspects of life in this country are given their opportunities of advancement. Because of the financial constraints in which RTE find themselves they are not going to be able to allow Irish programmes to be produced.

The increases in the cost of licence fees could have been avoided if action had been taken in time by the Minister and his Department. They should have taken that action a long time ago and unless it is taken in the not too distant future the situation is going to get worse. A further danger in this matter is that many people who have always purchased their licences, in many cases with a certain amount of hardship, are going to find the payment of the licence fee so much greater a strain because of the extra £7. If they see approximately 90,000 people getting away without paying their licence fees will they not then say, "A neighbour of mine has not paid his television licence fee for two years and I do not see why I should bother either"? People may be tempted in this way. The Government on the one hand have not taken action to prevent people from escaping paying their licence fee and on the other hand by increasing the fees are making it much more difficult for people to pay the licence fee.

I have been looking through an old file which I have in regard to RTE. Going back to 1977 I see that RTE made a profit of something in the region of £1 million.

Mr. Killilea

I will tell the Deputy why in a few minutes.

Mr. Enright

In 1976-77 RTE made a profit in the region of £1.5 million. That was at a time when there was only one channel and at the end of 1978 the channel had shown a profit.

At different times licence fees have been increased, but in this instance the Minister and his Department have been aware that a sizeable number of people were not paying their licence fees and they should have taken action long before now to ensure that people would pay those fees. The Minister and his Department will have to look seriously at this whole question in the coming few weeks and they will have to come into this House and explain whether they have remedied the situation in regard to the payment of licence fees.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy has five minutes left.

Mr. Enright

It has been necessary to increase licence fees, but this could have been avoided if action had been taken before now by the Minister. I will give the remaining four or five minutes to Deputy Deasy.

Mr. Deasy

I join with Deputy Enright in condemning the price increases and I ask the Minister if he can give us any explanation as to why it is absolutely necessary at a time when we have been told that there is going to be a serious curtailment in the number of programmes being produced by RTE and in the number of home-produced programmes. Surely this is a further restriction in the coverage by RTE not just of programmes in general but of the home-produced material in particular. There has been a clamour from all types of associations, cultural and otherwise, in this country for the past number of years for an increase in the proportion of home programmes being shown on our national television service and the cuts announced recently mean a reduction in the amount being produced and also a general reduction in the number of hours of transmission by RTE.

I ask the Minister why the system of collecting licence fees is not improved. There seems to be a peculiar arrangement between the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, who are the Minister's responsibility, and RTE, again the Minister's responsibility, neither of whom seems to be answerable to the other. Why do the Department of Posts and Telegraphs have to collect the licence fees? Why can this duty not be given to RTE themselves, or otherwise why not make some alternative arrangement so that the rate of licence fee collection can be improved? I understand that at the moment some 800,000 homes in this country have television sets but the number of licences taken out annually is something like 630,000. Therefore, there are something like 170,000 defaulters at the moment. RTE would not have financial difficulties if this situation was improved. If the number of non-licence holders was eliminated completely there would not be any financial problems at the moment. The Minister might give serious consideration to the fact that the system by which the licence fees are collected is seriously wayward in some regards. If RTE were given control over their own resources — and this would be one of their resources — matters could only improve.

Another question being asked throughout the western half of the country is whether they are expected to continue to subsidise people in the eastern half of the country. It seems unfair that people who have only RTE1 and RTE2 should have to pay the same licence fees as people who have a choice of five channels. The Minister might make reference to this. Are we going to see a situation where the relaying of transmissions from the BBC and ITV are to be extended to include the other half of the country? It seems most unfair that the eastern seaboard and the northern counties within the State have access to this reception from the North of Ireland or from Britain and that no provision is made to extend the service to include people in the western half of the country.

Minister of State at the Department of Posts and Telegraphs (Mr. Killilea)

First of all I should like to point out to Deputy Enright that the arrangement of day-to-day programmes is a matter for the RTE Authority. The Minister for Posts and Telegraphs has not got a statutory function in this respect, as members of Fine Gael are well aware. I wonder if the purpose of Deputy Enright's recommendations in regard to programmes is to suggest a bigger increase in licence fees.

I am surprised the Opposition raised this matter on the Adjournment because, looking back on the history of licence fee increases I find this attitude hard to reconcile with the performance of the Coalition. From the establishment of the television service on 31 December 1961 until 1973, three increases were authorised. In that period the fee was increased from £4 to £7.50. Between October 1973 and April 1977, the Coalition reign, there were no fewer than four increases: the fee for a mono set, black and white, rose from £7.50 to £18.50. A colour licence fee of £15 was introduced in October 1973 and was increased to £31 by April 1977.

By contrast, the licence fee increase that will come into effect on 1 December next will be the first general increase authorised by this Government. The increase sanctioned from 1 December 1978 was attributable solely to increased costs arising from the introduction of RTE 2 and flowed directly from the decision of the previous Government to establish a second television service.

The increase announced recently is the first real increase attributable to the increased costs in the broadcasting service generally. When we look at the figures on the Coalition days and today we must remember that today there are two television services and three radio services. Per day the cost of the licence fee to the public is 12p, in contrast to the price of one daily newspaper, 20p. Among 12 countries in Europe we are in the lower half. I would point out to Deputies Enright and Deasy that the cost of the TV licence per day is 3p cheaper than a bar of fruit and nut chocolate. We can contrast that increase with the 50 per cent increase sanctioned by Deputy Enright's Government.

Mr. Enright

This is 50 per cent in one go—£31 to £45.

Mr. Killilea

It is not. It is from £38 to £45. It is a pity that the Fine Gael spokesman on consumer affairs saw fit to come in here without knowledge of the most elementary facts in regard to the matter he chose to raise on the Adjournment.

In reports in the Sunday Independent and The Sunday Press of 16 November, Deputy Enright, the spokesman on consumer affairs for Fine Gael, alleged that the Government have failed to tackle the problem of television licence evasion. I should like to put on record the performance in this area. In July 1977 there were 581,000 licences current and outstanding, including 140,000 colour licences. At the end of October this year there were 630,000 licences current and outstanding of which almost 300,000, or 47.6 per cent, were colour licences, representing an overall increase of 8.4 per cent in the number of all licences and 14 per cent in the number of colour licences.

In the newspaper reports to which I have referred, Fine Gael also attacked the proposed increase in the licence fee. I should point out that the increased revenue to be generated by this increase in fees will be substantially less than RTE sought in the current financial year. The decision to allow the increase was taken after most careful consideration of the application.

Returning to the spongers, this year two drives have been introduced to reduce the level of evasion. In the campaign carried out in April and May almost 180,000 homes were visited and 37,000 unlicensed television sets were detected. The second campaign is in progress at the moment and the results so far indicate that it will be equally successful. In the first week more than 8,000 unlicensed and incorrectly licenced sets were detected and almost 10,000 original licences were purchased. We have set a target of 650,000 licences this year and it looks as if this will be achieved.

Deputy Enright accused us of not having brought licence evaders to court. During the Donegal by-election summonses were issued in County Donegal against people with unlicensed sets—that happened the week before the election. Deputy Enright should not therefore be under any illusion about the seriousness of our attitude to spongers. We will not tolerate evasion.

As further evidence of our determination to reduce further the level of evasion, the development of a computerised system for television licence records is at an advanced stage. When this system is in operation it will streamline considerably the licence fee collection process, in regard to which Deputy Enright suggested there should be an alternative method. House to house inspections, however, will continue to be an essential part of the process to get at determined licence fee evaders, and in this connection I want to pay a special tribute to the staff of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs who are engaged on this work, which at times can be thankless and unpleasant.

Mr. Enright

Can the Minister give an estimate of the number of unlicensed sets in the country?

Mr. Killilea

I have not got the time to give all the figures but I suggest that the Deputy would do some homework before he comes into the House in future.

The Dáil adjourned at 9 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Wednesday, 19 November 1980.