Perhaps the most telling paragraph in the Sunday Business Post’s big scoop yesterday about new Green Party plans for a €15 monthly tax on broadband to replace the TV licence fee was the paragraph explaining why some in Government have misgivings about the notion:
However, concerns have been raised within government about the proposal, including how exemptions for lower incomes and pensioners would work under such a system, how the levy would be applied to different broadband deals or phone deals, and the impact the charge may have on the uptake of rural broadband.
Missing from that analysis, you might notice, is one very obvious problem: Charging people an extra €15 on their broadband bill every month, and then giving that money to the people who bring us such blockbuster shows as Fair City and Ireland’s Fittest Family might just be horrendously unpopular.
One of the few political benefits of the TV licence as it currently stands from the point of view of the Government, is that paying it is really – despite all the ads warning that you’ll be prosecuted – a matter of choice. There are thousands of young people, for example, who may not own televisions and instead stream their entertainment on laptops and other devices. There are many people who simply just don’t pay the fee, and take their chances with a knock on the door from an inspector. Finally, if you do pay the fee, then it is inextricably linked to the fact that you own a television and use it, which makes it seem inherently more reasonable than it actually is.
A tax on broadband to pay for television, by contrast, would abandon all of those advantages. It would, first, make broadband suppliers into tax collectors for RTÉ, adding an administrative burden to a multitude of private businesses – some of them local and regional suppliers covering gaps in the national market, and not exactly running massive profits. It would be almost impossible to evade since the tax would be tied to the supply by private firms of what is, for most people, now an essential utility. It would hit people who do not own televisions, and do not use them. And it would, we can safely say, be enormously unpopular in a way the Television Licence is not.
The Business Post reports that the Government’s difficulty is that it must choose between three very unpleasant options for the funding of RTÉ. Option one is to retain the current system, which is not working precisely because fewer and fewer people see the benefit of paying a television licence, and as their numbers grow, fears of prosecution fall. The carrot – having RTÉ around – is less tasty, and the stick – getting summoned to court – is increasingly less frightening. If Option One was working, then there’d be no need to consider other options.
Option two is simply to abolish the TV licence altogether and write RTÉ a cheque every year out of central exchequer funding. This too is a disaster zone for Government, since the money going to RTÉ would have to come from somewhere else. Health maybe. Or Education. It would also provide no certainty for RTÉ because, heaven knows, somebody like me could become the responsible Minister some day and turn the tap off on day one.
Option three is something like a broadband tax: A universal charge that is almost impossible to evade and puts RTÉ on a sound financial footing moving into the future. The problem with this scheme is that it is at once the one that makes the most financial sense, and at the same time the one that makes the least political sense, since it will come with the most immediate pain for voters.
There is, of course, the unmentionable option four: Tell RTÉ that, like their competitors in Virgin Media and Newstalk and Sky Ireland, they should just stand on their own two feet and run the business off advertising or subscriptions, like anybody else. This one cannot be considered at present for two reasons: First, politicians are convinced that RTÉ performs a vital public service in how it reports the news, which a cynic might think could be translated as “RTÉ provides a vital service to politicians in how it reports the news”.
Second, it would in fact be unpopular: Amazing as it might seem, there are still many voters in the country who would react badly to the cancellation of Ireland’s Fittest Family, or, for some godforsaken reason, First Dates Ireland.
One problem for politicians here is that the political incentives are not aligned: Politicians will receive zero benefit from the public for saving RTÉ. All of the benefit accrues to RTÉ staff, who remain massively overpaid compared to the rest of the media. Yet politicians stand to take all of the political pain for saving RTÉ, by being forced to defend an unpopular nonsense tax like that the Sunday Business Post reports them to be considering.
Which makes me ask: Where’s the imagination? What the Government should do is fairly simple: Propose a new funding model for RTÉ – let’s say this broadband tax – and put it to a consultative referendum. Then, don’t campaign in the referendum – tell RTÉ and anyone interested in supporting RTÉ that it is up to them to make the case for their own survival to the public.
If the public votes for a new tax under those circumstances, then bully for RTÉ. If they do not, then that says something about how much the country values “public service broadcasting”. At the moment, the politicians are set to take all the pain on behalf of Montrose. They must believe that they’re going to get something very valuable in return, mustn’t they?