Ryan seeks end to TV licence fee

Former minister for communications Eamon Ryan said today the Green Party would abolish the television licence fee if it becomes part of the next government.

The Green Party TD for Dublin South said a licence fee was an outdated method of funding for public sector broadcasting and was "ineffective".

Mr Ryan said that if in government the Green Party would abolish the television licence fee as a funding mechanism for the public sector component of RTÉ.

“Media organisations all over the world are looking to their funding in the future. The age of the internet has rendered our current method close to obsolete, overly bureaucratised and ineffective," he said.

Mr Ryan said he had been working on a new type of funding while Minister for Communications and said that work undertaken by the Department in introducing an alternative was "well advanced".

"One approach to the financing of public sector broadcasting, including the possibility of other media, involves some small charge on the volume of data. This type of funding model would fund public service content and be much easier to charge and cheaper to operate than our current licence fee collection system," he said.

"This sort of change would not happen immediately. We need to start with open consultation on a principles based policy approach. We need to answer two main questions - How do we fund newsrooms while maintaining absolute editorial independence," he added.

The issue of funding for public broadcasting has come into question recently with Ireland's biggest newspaper publishers calling for a curb on RTÉ's commercial activities in digital media.

In a submission presented to the Department of Communications and the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland last year, the National Newspapers of Ireland (NNI) highlighted concerns about the way the broadcaster is able to use its €200 million annual licence fee income to leverage its online and mobile activities.

RTÉ has denied using public funding for its digital media ventures and described the NNI's call as "impractical, inaccurate and regressive".

This isn't the first time the former minister has courted controversy with his views on public broadcasting. Mr Ryan's proposals outlined last year to designate certain sport fixtures as free to air were heavily criticised by sporting bodies such as the IRFU which claimed it could lose up to €12 million per annum if this took place.