It's official: Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources Pat Rabbitte has published proposals to scrap the TV licence fee and replace it with a Public Service Broadcasting Charge, which every single household in the country will have to pay, regardless of whether they have a television or not.
The charge will come into effect on January 1st 2015, and while the exact cost has yet to be revealed, it's not expected to exceed the current TV licence fee of €160. The Minister says he'll be engaging in a 'public consultation process' to decide how the charge should be applied and collected.
As well as this, he plans to take a closer look at RTE, and see what can be done to make the station more 'efficient'. This review will look at how the state broadcaster deals with Irish language radio services too. Plus, there'll be a push to bring forward new legislation that revises the current arrangements for the amount of advertising that both state and commercial broadcasters can show us. That means there could well be a cap put on the number of minutes of ads they're allowed to feature on a daily basis.
The exact details of the charge, and indeed to whom exactly it will apply are not clear at present, but the Irish Independent reports that exceptions would be made for those "currently exempt from the TV licence fee such as households in receipt of the household benefits package."
The newspaper also says that Rabbitte does not believe that anyone in the country could claim to have no access to Public Service Broadcasting, and therefore he thinks everyone should contribute. "We should not have freeloaders,” the Minister said.
Looks like Irish TV is facing quite the shake up so...
