Paul Murphy confronts officials over TV licence compliance figures, arguing the official 18% evasion rate understates the true level of non-payment and may be closer to 39%. He presses the department on exemptions for web-only TVs, confusing public messaging, and whether the licensing system is fit for purpose in the streaming era.
Key figures and the challenge:
Paul Murphy outlines his calculation of potentially liable households, contrasting UNPOST and Nielsen-derived numbers with his own arithmetic. He claims that after removing no-TV homes and state-funded licences, some 485,000 eligible households are not paying, implying a near 39% non-payment rate rather than the cited 18%.
Exemptions, messaging and the law:
Murphy presses officials on the legal definition of a "television set" and the ministerial exemptions for small devices and web-only reception. He highlights a contradiction between public advertising and statutory nuance: ads and guidance say "if you have a TV you must pay," while exemptions for web-only reception complicate that message.
Data sources and survey limits:
Officials cite UNPOST and Nielsen data; Murphy argues surveys lack device-level granularity and that the numbers have been briefed inconsistently. The exchange focuses on whether web-only households should be treated as exempt and how that affects headline non-payment figures.
Funding reform and future-proofing:
Murphy invokes the Future of Media Commission’s recommendations and says the debate points to a broader question of how public broadcasting should be funded. He suggests the TV licence model needs to be reformed or replaced to reflect streaming habits and to create an equitable, sustainable funding approach.
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I want to start with TV licence payment and non-payment figures. Could you tell me the number of households who should be paying the TV licence, legally speaking, who are not currently, both as a total figure and a percentage? As you will have seen from the paper there, there are three categories of people you would be looking at. There is the TV licence evasion rate, which is around 18%. Then there are the households who say that they either do not have a TV or they are using broadband to connect to the TV, which is a significant loophole in this country, which overall between them has grown significantly. So those figures are 20% now. So you are saying 18% of those who should be paying their TV licence are not. I want to put it to you that that is a very significant understatement of the level of non-payment, which I think is a combination of people not being able to afford to pay a regressive tax and a conscious boycott. Let me give you my figures and then you tell me where I'm wrong from your perspective and we dig into it. The total number of potentially liable households in the state is about 1.97 million. 11% of those don't have TVs, so minus 217,000, that leaves you at about 1.77 million. The Department of Social Protection then pays for about 500,000 licences, that leaves you at about 1.25 million. And 768,000 people in 2025 paid for a TV licence. That leaves about 485,000 not paying who are eligible. So the rate of non-payment rather than being 18% is actually 39%. Can you tell me where I've gone wrong with that figure from your perspective? The numbers we get are from UNPOST. So the numbers we provided were from UNPOST who actually collect the licence fee. But as I say, they've given us a percentage in the numbers in terms of those who are not paying the licence fee or say they're on non-TV. Can you tell me where? You start off at about 2 million. You lose those who don't have TVs. You went through those figures quite quickly there for me. So we start with about 2 million. About 217,000 don't have TVs. That leaves you at 1.77 million. Then 500,000 the Department of Social Protection takes care of. And then we know 768,000 people pay the TV licence. That leaves about 485,000 who are not paying. So 485,000 over 1.25 million is about 39% rate of non-payment. I think the discrepancy might be near 11% who don't have TVs, as you say, because I think that's near a 20% who either don't have TVs or access it via broadband. Yes. So you're saying if you have a TV that accesses the television channels via broadband, you're not eligible to pay the TV licence? That's the law of the land. So you're saying that the department which issues ads saying if you have a television, you must have a TV licence is wrong. And these ads are played very regularly on RT and it says very clearly, if you have a TV licence, you must have a TV licence. Yeah, look, it's shorthand, but the details are as I've given you there. You're saying that the tvlicence.ie website which says if you have a television, it is your legal obligation to have a valid TV licence is wrong. Well, if you have more details, if you have a TV licence and you access TV via the TV set, then yes. But it's hard to distill the message into... I think also, Deputy, it is, because it is as you know the technical term of having the standard mode of reception in the TV and so on, so most of those homes would really apply to be no TV, are there people who are watching on tablet, player and so on. No, no, forget about the tablet and player. People have a TV. So if I have a TV and I access web only services and I pay the TV licence, do I get my money back? I listen to all these ads telling me that if you have a TV you have to pay a TV licence and the government website says very clearly if you have a TV you have to pay a TV licence, do I get my money back? Well I don't think, it's not a question for us, we don't do the TV licence, it's a question for us and the government, but I mean... Okay, you don't get your money back, do you? Let's be honest. Well, no, but if you're in that position, then you should say I don't access TV, which a lot of people do say that, so they have a wherewithal to say it. So you are misstating the law. I think you're misstating the law in order to make... Can I make a point about that? From a messaging point of view, you've got to be as clear as you can be. I think what this does demonstrate is the fact that technology has moved beyond the current legislation and how we capture it. That was gone into in detail in terms of the Future Media Commission, which is probably the biggest review of public service media in decades, that there's all sorts of anomalies within the system, we all know that. But from a messaging point of view, you can't have all those nuances, I'm sure you'll appreciate in a simple piece of commercial messaging. I believe that you're misstating the nuances and I believe the reason you're doing it is to make the nonpayment figures look less bad than they are. I quote from the legislation, television set means any electronic apparatus capable of receiving and exhibiting television broadcasting services broadcast for general reception. Key point being capable of receiving and exhibiting. You do not have to be accessing TV via it, the device needs to be capable. Any TV is capable of receiving these services. There would be no incentive for us to, firstly we don't collect the licence fee, but secondly there would be no incentive for us to either misstate the figures or so on. We don't control the figures, but what would the incentive be? The incentive is to make it look like there isn't a massive boycott of the TV licence happening, which is very clear. Almost one in two people are boycotting the TV licence, for one reason or another, rather than one in five. The figures are not provided by RT, they're provided by HomePost. You have decided, and interestingly you changed your briefing over, the original briefing we got said one thing in terms of it. It said that 21%, according to Nielsen, the estimated population of a portion of households who are no TV homes stands at 424,000, or 20.8%, and then you updated your briefing to change that, because that isn't accurate in fact, to distinguish between 11% that are no TV, and we all agree they don't have to pay the TV licence, or legally they're not meant to pay the licence, and then you say 10% who have a TV but receive their signal through broadband. We changed that only because the number still stands. We changed that because there's a nuance to how Nielsen described it, but actually the same point still stands. Either of those categories don't have to pay a TV licence and say that's the reason they're not paying it. Can I ask the department, is that your position, that if you have a TV and it's broadband only, contrary to all the ads, you actually are not required to pay a TV licence? It's probably subtly debatable in the definition of the web TV there, just to say, so I know you cited the definition of television set, so the Act provides for exemptions, so there are two exemptions set out in ministerial order. Exemption one is a size exemption, so small devices. The second exemption is what we call a technology exemption, so a device capable of accessing television services by means of the publicly available internet only would not be liable. So just in that category of web TV, there's probably subtly there for the individual in terms of, while they might be accessing TV only via broadband, the television set itself might still be capable of, for example, receiving, it might have a digital TV tuner so it could get serview, so just from the point of view of the individual's liability, it's for the individual to check, do they have a liable television set, so these are figures coming from a survey, I suppose, so it's just when you get to the individual level, people would have to check, but that's the position in terms of the exemptions, just to set it out. So you wouldn't accept that necessarily, the 11% or the 10% who have, who are described in the Nielsen thing as being web only, that they are all exempt from it? Because if they have a regular TV, if they go into a regular shop, they buy a regular TV, they don't hook it up to any TV service, nonetheless, if it has the capacity, they are meant to pay it. So I suppose, I think the overall category in the Nielsen study, I think it's really useful, but it's just when you get down to the individual level, there's no data on the individual television itself, but I think in fairness, it's a very important category because there'd be a lot of people in that category whose television or the device that they have can only access services by broadband, it's just to say there's a subtlety that within that category, there could be a certain number of people who, as you say, have purchased maybe a smart TV with a digital tuner. So I think when you get down to the granularity of the device, the issue, I suppose, is these surveys aren't a device granular survey, but I think it's a very useful category to use because there will be a huge amount of those smart TVs, those web TV households who have a TV that can only access via the broadband, so it wouldn't be liable, but I wouldn't want to give the impression that everyone within that category would or wouldn't, because we just don't know the types of TV set people have. But I mean, if I go into a shop and I look at the TV sets, the vast majority of TV sets that are TVs, rather than computer monitors, have the capability of accessing TV regularly. I mean, that is the case, no? A lot of them do, yeah, I suppose it's different not to go into brands, and it's much more common in the US for a TV to be sold and only access broadband now. In Europe, it's more common that a Samsung TV, for example, will have the digital tuner on it so you can plug in a... Just to finalise, sorry, to go back to you, Mr Machurst, would you agree with the recommendation of the Future of Media Commission which said that a taxation-based approach offers the best prospect for a sustainable, future-proofed, equitable and publicly acceptable funding model? In other words, we should do away with this regressive TV licence and we should properly fund public broadcasting, RT and others, by taxation. Look, what I would say is, I mean, this is going to be a matter for RT, this is going to be a matter for you and the Iraqis and for the government, and absolutely, the Future of Media Commission recommendations were extremely well-developed and thought through and the vast majority have been enacted. I do think you've touched on the point, which is really important, about even here, there is a confusion about, with some TVs, do you need a licence or not? And I think the fact that, like in the UK, if you watch something via iPlayer, you need a TV licence. Here, if you watch something on RTPlayer, you don't. And increasingly, we've got millions of people watching via the player, so there is a loophole there. So there's no doubt that, at the very least, the kind of, you know, what device you watch it on and so on needs to be addressed. And the other thing I would just say, you know, to the committee and to people, it's called the TV licence, but don't forget, increasingly, it pays for online content, the news app, and radio content as well. It's not just about TV programmes. And I know that's based on the TV, as you've spent a long time talking about here, but I do think it argues that it needs to be looked at as to, you know, to future-proof the legislation, whether it's direct taxation or a household charge or whether it's a reformed version of the TV licence. It needs to be updated to reflect viewing habits, in my view.
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