Households may face immediate fixed-charge notice penalties if they do not pay the television licence fee, under fresh proposals due to be considered by Government this week.
There could also be a degree of opt-in which would see a person need to key in a code to access publicly funded content. Businesses with a large number of screens could also face higher charges, while An Post could be given access to information from the local property tax register in a bid to crack down on evasion by using the full range of available information.
In a written submission to Minister of State in the Department of Communications James Lawless, An Post said the current TV licence database is about 40 years old and requires increasingly scarce skilled resources to manage. It also outlined new potential measures for enforcement.
[ Revenue Commissioners will have no role in collecting television licence feeOpens in new window ]
At present, if a household has not paid the TV licence, a court summons is issued. An Post is now proposing that rather than issuing a court summons, a fixed-charge notice would be issued if the fee isn’t paid within a certain time period.
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“The amount of that fixed-charge notice should be sufficient to act as a deterrent on payment,” the letter says.
If the fixed-charge notice is unpaid, a court summons would then be issued. Inspectors would still be kept on to ensure houses that have signed a declaration of exemption are operating within the rules.
[ Keeping RTÉ licence fee would be ‘deeply disappointing’ - Ní RaghallaighOpens in new window ]
A number of suggestions have also been made to overhaul the TV licence database.
The database does not contain the full list of residential and business premises and about 20 per cent of it is “anonymous” in that it only has details such as “occupier” while about 35 per cent of the entries are non-unique and predominantly rural addresses.
In order to modernise the database, An Post has suggested two options: input data from the local property tax system or use the actual local property tax system and input TV licence data on to that.
In the letter, it is also suggested to Mr Lawless that extending liability for the TV licence to all devices instead of just the TV could broaden the paid pool by almost 360,000 households, although there would still be challenges to confirm the possession of a device within a household.
If the liability was extended it would be assumed that every household has a device unless the householder submitted a statutory declaration that there are no devices capable of receiving public media.
Businesses could also follow the example of the UK, where a single licence fee is paid for the first 15 units, and then another fee is paid for every five units thereafter.
Pubs, hotels, bookies and hospitals would be in scope for that additional charge.
A source close to Mr Lawless said there was “an argument for making it a per-device fee rather than per TV.”
These ideas are “all in the mix”, the source said.
At the final Cabinet meeting of the summer this week, Ministers are also expected to agree a new funding model for RTÉ which would see the broadcaster receive multiannual funding from the State while also retaining the TV licence.
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