From Citizens Information: “Every household, business or institution in Ireland with a television or equipment capable of receiving a television signal (using an aerial, satellite dish, cable or other means) must have a television licence”.
The funding from TV licences is used to support RTÉ 1, RTE 2, Radio 1, RnaG, TG4, Lyric FM & Performing groups.
Dare-4:
A question: If you own a TV but don’t watch TV on it but instead only use it for gaming why do you still need to pay for the service you’re not being provided with?
Another question: If you own a TV enabled mobile phone or a PC with an internet connection on which you can also watch TV or listen to radio you don’t need a TV licence (assuming you don’t have a TV). Why not?
Yet another question: Why isn’t there a radio licence?
Just curious like…
Did you know: in the UK, probably here too, you can get a free TV licence if you are blind. How fucking cheeky is that!?!
there used to be a radio licence way back in time AFAIK.
You’re not telling anything new to me…
It’s the same story over here in Italy.
We have to pay a TV licence if we have any equipment able to (or adaptable to) receive a tv signal.
So, anything that someway can become a tv receiver is subject to a tv licence. A normal TV, a 3G mobile phone, a vcr, a computer.
We have to pay even if we don’t use the equipment to watch the tv, but just for gaming or for VHS or DVD playing. We have to pay even if the signal doesn’t reach our home because we live in a narrow and long valley.
Many years ago there was a radio licence. We had to pay it if we were owner of just a radio, with no tv… The tv licence now covers the radio licence as well.
Until a dozen years ago we had to pay a separate radio licence for the car radio. Even if we didn’t have it fitted, the aerial on the car roof was enough for us to be subject to this fee. Since almost nobody was willing to pay it, the government included it in the road tax.
Maybe I shouldn”t tell you this, but in Italy almost half of the people don’t pay the tv licence. We think it’s a theft because state television already has a big income from tv ads and commercials and anyway tv contents suck!
The agents from revenue send us a letter every year to tell us that they’re not receiving our money and ask us to check if it’s alright with our payment. Of course if you reply you’re exposed and framed, but if you ignore the letter everything is quiet for a whole year… until next letter… They aren’t allowed to enter our houses and check if we have the tv fitted, so it’s an easy way to dodge this tax.
I didn’t realise that Treasa, I suppose I shouldn’t shout too loud or they’ll bring it back
Jaysus Antonio, sounds like they’re really trying to screw you!
I don’t think it’s as easy to dodge it here though to be honest I usually buy it rather than risk a fine. According to RTÉ around 99% of people have tv licences, don’t know how accurate that figure is though.
Maca, can I ask you how much your tv licence costs?
Over here we (should) pay 104.00 euros per year, and this licence (that they call it subscription) goes to RAI to support three public TV terrestrial analog channels, five public radio analog channels, ten public TV terrestrial digital channels, a certain number of free satellite TV channels and other minor services…
Then we have something like 6 or 7 commercial TV channels that cover the whole nation, then some tens of local TV channels and hundreds and hundreds radios…
These last TV’s and radios are supported by commercials and ads and don’t ask for licences.
Currently ours is €158 which funds the channels I mentioned in the post above. I wouldn’t mind if we have great TV but there is a lot of shit on Irish TV & radio
Yesterday night we had the news that as from 2008 the subscription (licence) for the public TV will raise from €104 to €106, due to the inflation…
No news about any improvement of the contents, though :-/
I think our is also going up by a few Euros and same problem … no improvement in content