Despite the headline this is the least favoured option. A household charge collected by revenue seems to be the most popular with opposition to exchequer funding.

by Prestigious_Talk6652

37 comments

  1. And a nice little increase for them. No doubt there will be some VAT or some bollox on top.

  2. ![gif](giphy|zBqaukCE3oM1vW6twP|downsized)

    How about fuck off

  3. Fuck off. Or just nationalise the rte and run it like a public company, with complete ~~oversight~~ government control and visibility on every major financial decision, and all things should kept on public record.

  4. “Broadband” is a very nebulous term, this sound like an incredibly difficult and expensive method to gather the TV licence ~~fine~~ fee. I wonder how much of it will be swallowed up on admin costs?

    Will it be a government agency doing the admin, or will DOB swoop in to do the honors…

  5. FUCK. THIS. SHIT.

    >Plans to replace Ireland’s outdated TV licence fee could see a new levy of €10 to €15 a month charged on household internet and phone bills,

    So take my house, broadband and 4 mobile phone users, next year will be a fifth mobile phone.

    Would that mean we’d be paying €50-€75 a month? Up to a grand a year?

  6. I wouldn’t mind the license fee if I felt like we got the kind of value people in the UK get with Channel 4/the BBC. Channel 4 and BBC both produce high quality excellent content suited to a variety of interests. RTE… not so much. A lot of it’s budget is spent acquiring foreign programs. I don’t think this makes much sense for a public broadcaster in an age of streaming.

    If in addition to news, local interest talk shows etc. RTE produced 5-10 high quality offerings/year I think people would be much happier. Sometimes it seems like TnaG gets better results then RTE with a fraction of the budget.

    Hell, call me a West Brit, but if I had a choice I’d have my license fee go to the UK broadcasters instead. Frankly, most of the best Irish talent works for British broadcasters anyway, recall the beloved local favourite Father Ted was broadcast on Channel 4. Moone boy on Sky one. Derry Girls Channel 4, Normal People BBC3, Ballykissangel BBC. Of the ones that did air on RTE almost all were coproductions with BBC or Channel 4.

    Put our limited budget towards producing high quality content that can then be sold to foreign broadcasters. It’s not like Ireland is lacking for skilled film-makers. They just all work in the UK.

  7. >Media Commission created to help censor the internet, including potenitally asking us to upload our passports to view pornography online.

    > proposed 15 euro **per month** tax on broadband on the internet.

    The Greens war on the internet expands.

    Edit:
    Source:

    [“Mr Godfrey suggested that his Commission would require adults and minors (children under 18) to send a copy of their passport to websites- including porn sites- and then, also, send them a live selfie so the porn sites could see what they looked like right now. And then the porn sites would run biometric data processing on those images (details unspecified) to confirm they were over 18.” ](https://www.thegist.ie/the-gist-wtf-commission/)

  9. From the article: There is significant opposition at a senior level within Fianna Fáil to the direct exchequer funding option with both Tánaiste Micheál Martin and McGrath publicly rejecting the possibility.
    The party is at odds with the Green Party’s Martin on the issue after the media minister said last month that direct exchequer funding for public service broadcasting should still be given “serious consideration”.

  10. Surprise surprise, the anti human green socialists want to tax you to bits.

  11. No problem – we will cancel our broadband and tether from phone with 5g. Or will they charge that as well?

    It only costs e15/month for a 5g simcard – so now they will double the price of it! Putting 15 quid on everything is bullshit…

    For anyone wondering whether 5g is worth it: Not on a phone really, the signal is crap indoors most of time. If you are outdoors with good line of sight to tower you can get 500/50 tho which is better than my wired broadband. I can put the phone in the window and leave hotspot running.

  14. Time for another Irish Water type protest. What about all the people that don’t own a TV? Or how RTE mishandles money? There’s no way this should be happening.

  15. I would burn down the Luas in protest against this. What the fuck is wrong with them? RTE is a load of shite, I haven’t watched any shite from them, nevermind the news. Only the Rugby world cup when they had it, most the time it was on virgin media. Fucking RTE players break music drives me mad.

    Why would they consider forcing us to pay for something we don’t want or need. Is it their legal right to get this money?

    By the looks of it: they need money to survive. Nobody in Ireland would pay for a subscription service to RTE. So in order to survive and develop, their only chance is to steal or leech the money from us. Fuck off.

  16. Abolish RTE.

    ​

    I don’t even have a tv , and haven’t since about 98, fuck off trying to charge me.

  17. So, supposedly one of the richest countries in the world and they have to force a TV license on everyone and then when the plebs, quite rightly, kick up a stink about corruption and waste in RTE the response isn’t cleaning house and jail time for those responsible. The response instead is a new way to fleece the country into paying for it. And with a nice little increase added in for themselves.

    Leo was in Davis boasting about public broadcasting during the week.

    Should’ve known that behind the scenes he was probably telling leaders how great it was having a state broadcaster who had to take it easy on you for fear you’d enact legislation to cut off their funding by reducing the license fee.

    In typical Leo fashion it’s straight out of the Tory playbook and how they’ve turned the BBC into giving them such an easy ride despite how grim they’ve turned things in Britain.

  18. Honestly i think this is a great move. Public service broadcasting is super important for a nation. Id favour the revenue collecting this tax as they’re an efficient outfit.

  19. 🤣

    So enough people don’t want to pay it at this stage, that they are looking for other ways to collect it. 

    Talk about not taking a hint. 

  21. Fuck off, if rte want more money to make shows them they can stop paying their executives a million euro an hour

  22. Seems like yer man who does meditations for the anxious mind was hired by the BBC. So we pay public money for British shows while continuing to send our young talent out of the country because we won’t pay them. 

  23. How about they scramble the RTE channels instead of having them “free” to air, and if someone wants to watch them, they have to sign up for the service. Similar to if you want Sky channels, etc. Stop forcing people to pay for a service they don’t want.
    That would be a good gague of how many people actually want to watch RTE.

  24. I always feel like our government goes out of their way to be out of touch and piss us off. €15 a month is more expensive than Netflix, Disney+, Prime, etc… the absolute fucking cheek to charge that for re-runs of My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, The Late Late Show, and documentaries of random Irish poets.

  25. I was happy to pay water charges but I’d riot in the streets over this

  26. Ah…we should rename this country to Republic of Taxes Upon Taxes! Ffs

  28. Every month every one of us is going to be paying 0.01% of Oliver Callan’s 1hr a weekday on-air salary.

  31. This story has been popping up in various forms for 10 years. I’ll believe it when I see it

  32. This charge should only be on homes with fiber connections giving actual broadband not the trickle most Irish telecommunications companies call broadband. Anything else would be ridiculous. I don’t have fiber broadband in my house. According to the NBI it will be 2026 at best before I get it. The connection I do have is so bad I have to have 2 broadband connections in my house just to work from home. One telephone and one 4g. Flipping between the 2 during the day gets me through but only with about 3mb download and 0.5mb upload. Sometimes even that doesn’t work so I have to tether from my mobile phone just to connect to a zoom call. My contract doesn’t allow tethering but I have no choice and haven’t been caught yet. My wife and two kids also have mobile phones. So that is potentially 6 connections I would have to pay for under this stupid proposal.

    I’ll go to jail before I pay the government who failed to provide decent infrastructure €90 a month just so the likes of Lotti, don’t you know who my daddy was, Ryan, Oliver, I was funny in the 00s, Callan and Miriam, my brother might be Taoiseach some day, O’Callaghan can get paid over quarter of a million a year each.

  33. I’m totally ok with just getting rid of rte as an entity, I never watch it anyway, completely rubbish broadcaster

  35. Sounds like a clusterfuck on how they would manage it unless it’s per device license, which was the plan all along.

    Remember, once this goes through, they can easily increase the license fee whenever suits them, and people can’t avoid it.

    This gives RTE even less of a reason to reform and continue wasting taxpayers’ money.

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