At its final meeting this morning before the summer recess, the Cabinet will sign off on a new funding proposal for RTÉ, which is expected to retain the TV Licence fee.
Taoiseach Simon Harris believes the new proposal will bring a level of certainty to the sector and represents significant changes for RTÉ and other public service media.
The current rate of €160 per year for the TV Licence is expected to be retained with supplementation from Exchequer fudning on a three-year basis.
This decision is expected to see a total amount of public funding of up to €725 million invested over the next three years. This amount will comprise of paid TV Licences, free TV Licences, and exchequer funding top ups to bring it up to the agreed level, if necessary. As such, the amount of TV Licences revenue collected will dictate the exact amount of Exchequer funding needed.
Fine Gael, Fianna Fail, and the Green Party met last night to sign off on the proposal ahead of today’s Cabinet meeting.
The Taoiseach said public service broadcasting matters and "it matters that we fund it properly", when he arrived for the Cabinet meeting this morning.
He said a lot of good work has been done by RTÉ in light of what he described as the recent "saga" at the broadcaster and said the ball is now back in the Government's court to respond in terms of public service broadcasting.
The Taoiseach said he was confident that the Government would make two very significant changes today:
"One, there is a significant uplift in the level of public funding and secondly there is a multi-annual certainty that most State agencies, public service organisations, departments would give their right arm for. The idea that for the first time, that RTÉ can actually plan on a multi-annual basis to implement their strategy is very, very significant."
It was also confirmed that An Post will also retain the contract for collecting the TV Licence fee. The organisiation will be given €6 million funding over three years to help improve collection rates. The concept of moving this collection to the responsibility of Revenue was deemed too controversial ahead of the upcoming General Election.
