Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

The Minister gave the figures for payment levels, suggesting they indicated that the vast majority pay. I think he said 800,000 paid last year and 358,000 had paid halfway through this year. In total, there are 1.8 million households in the State, approximately 500,000 of which are exempt. That leaves 1.3 million households. The Minister said that over a half-year period, 400,000 people paid. That indicates that more than a third refuse to pay the TV licence. People are voting with their feet. He should take the advice given a number of years ago by the Future of Media Commission to get rid of the TV licence. Multiple European countries such as Belgium, France, Iceland and others have scrapped their versions of the TV licence over the past five or six years. The Government should get rid of this regressive charge. I warn the Minister not to replace it with another regressive charge, this time simply collected by Revenue. While we need to increase funding for public service broadcasting, who pays? Is it a regressive, unjust tax on the poorest families in our society or should we tax big social media giants that are parasitical in respect of our main media and effectively suck up advertising? We need a big tech tax on them to fund proper public service broadcasting.

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