TECH-SAVVY viewers who watch digital television on their computers or mobile phones will be exempt from paying licence fees, under new measures announced yesterday.
Launching a new online payment system for television licences, Minister for Communications Eamon Ryan said that digital devices such as laptops and 3G phones had been deliberately excluded from the licence scheme.
"To a certain extent we want to see that develop," said Mr Ryan. "We want to see digital applications move quickly - we don't want to restrain it."
The Government wants to encourage rapid digital take-up. British stations such as the BBC will cease analog broadcasts in 2009, Mr Ryan pointed out yesterday, and customers on the east coast who use UK analog transmissions will lose much of their free-to-air programming unless they can access digital broadcasts.
"We have a timetable having digital television up and running in the second half of 2009 . . . RTÉ is working flat out to achieve this, and I think we'll deliver," he said.
An Post will administer the new online payment scheme for television licences via the new www.tvlicence.ie website.
Those behind the site hope it will work as smoothly as the online service for motor tax and will reduce the estimated 13,000 television licence prosecutions that go before the courts each year.
"We want to make it easier for people to pay," said Mr Ryan. "We don't want to send people to prison for failing to pay television licences."
Under the scheme announced yesterday, offenders who ignore warning letters about their lack of a television licence will be told to pay a €53 fine and buy a €160 licence. If they don't, they will summonsed to appear in court, where they face a minimum €635 fine on conviction.
In the past, people who ignored reminder letters were ordered to appear in court and were not given the option of a small fine.
As well as the tens of thousands of television licence cases dealt with by the courts, 167 people have been jailed since 2003 for failing to pay court-ordered TV licence-related fines.