Brendan Hoban: TV Licence defaulters are selfish and foolish                  

Western People 24.10.23

According to the findings of  a recent Irish Times/Ipsos opinion poll 40 per cent of the Irish public will not pay their television licence fees this year. The presenting reason is that this is in reaction to the RTÉ troubles earlier in the year related to the varied minutiae of precedence and entitlement that understandably enraged viewers struggling to make ends meet.

The more probable explanation is that, like the water charges of some years ago, those who for whatever reason didn’t want to pay the television licence were gifted with a socially defensible way of not paying their bills while feeling justified in doing so. It was the principle, they argued, not the money. Defaulting on the licence fee was the best of all worlds, keeping a claim on the higher ground while pocketing the €160 for yourself.

Time was when people who hadn’t paid their licence fees lived in dread of a knock on the door and the subsequent shame or embarrassment it might entail. Before now there was general agreement that an annual contribution of €160 (or 44 cents a day) seemed a fair outlay for RTÉ programming in its multiple manifestations. The perception then was that defaulters were anti-social, anti-democratic, anti-public interest and should be aggressively pursued by the law to penalise evasion.

Even though our society tolerated and sought to justify almost any evasion of community responsibility, not paying the television licence was then taken to be evidence of a miserly and mean-spirited character. Though shame has almost disappeared out of the public lexicon, not paying your television somehow retained an unusual badge of civic dishonour. Until now, that is. Now, the RTÉ debacle has made it respectable, even virtuous to default. And no longer ‘mean’ – in the sense of ‘greedy’ or ‘parsimonious’.

What stopped (some) people from reneging on their television licences was the fear of prosecution but, now with the number of defaulters increasing, that prospect is becoming increasingly unlikely as more and more draw the foolish, short-term conclusion that RTÉ’s bills no longer need to be paid. It’s obvious that the more people who refuse to pay the licence the more difficult it is to prosecute the growing cadre of defaulters. The easy solution is to pretend that someone else will look after the bill.

This is where the notion of a victimless crime has helped to justify the growth in the comparable practice, for example, of shop-lifting. One version of justifying what is essentially theft is that shops and supermarkets have insured themselves against pilfering  – or, to use a more accurate term, stealing – so it’s just the insurance company that’s out of pocket. And that’s okay because insurance companies in turn take out their own insurance to cover their losses and so on. So no one really loses out in the long run.

This kind of circular reasoning is effectively justifying a range of crimes and misdemeanours on the basis that there is no victim involved – when clearly there is.

Take the RTÉ licence fee. At present the government is in negotiations with RTÉ in an effort   – post the RTÉ hidden payments scandals – to agree the financial resources it needs to allow it to continue. Thus, the Minister for Public Expenditure, Paschal Donohue, told a post-budget press conference last week that RTÉ would receive emergency funding before the end of the year. But even before the hidden payments scandal, RTÉ had sought €34 million to stay afloat and since the scandal broke, a decline in licence fee sales and renewals is estimated to have cost RTÉ €21 million. Clearly the total sum RTÉ needs will be in the region of €50-plus million.

Clearly too that sum will have to come out of government funds ­– in other words from the taxpayer. This means that between €50-plus million that might be available for a range of other worthy causes will not now be available –  because of the gap in RTÉ finances. In other words, in simple terms, there is a direct connection between the decision of licence defaulters to default and, for example, the provision of better services for, say, children with autism.

This connection is never (or rarely) owned between citizens (who renege on their moral obligations – to pay tax, etc –) and the vulnerable who as a result have their rights diminished. Justifications for such definitively unacceptable practices include: a knee-jerk blame response; the government for mismanagement of the economy; big business for excessive profits; politicians for feathering their own nests; and the cost of living because it increases the pressure on people on the margins. It’s always someone else’s fault and someone else is always expected to pay for it.

But, as we know, it’s always the poor (in whatever sense that term may be applicable) that ultimately suffer because the defaulters assume rights that ultimately victimise the poor – as with the TV licence fee or shoplifting.

It is a nonsense to argue that those who refuse to assume their responsibilities as citizens can pretend or presume that their crimes are victimless. Or for anyone else to conclude that the rule of law is not diminished by not prosecuting those who flaunt it for their own selfish purposes.

Fines for not having a television licence are €1,000 – and €2,000 for subsequent offences. Not collecting them or at least attempting to collect them is sending the wrong signal.

Note: My new book, Holding Out for a Hero/The Long Wait for Pope Francis, was launched by Fr Tony Flannery in the Newman Institute, Cathedral Grounds, Ballina on Friday, October 27 at 8.00pm. Copies now available online from mayobooks.ie.