Freedom of the media is essential in a democracy and people are free to choose whatever medium they want to get their information from. In most villages of Ireland, people can get newspapers from whatever country they want to in these islands and they can certainly get television channels from wherever they want. People are concerned about rising prices but if newspaper prices go up, they can stop buying them and if a Sky or Virgin subscription goes up, they can stop paying it. What they cannot do is lawfully stop paying the television licence. It is paid in return for public service broadcasting and it raises €200 million per year, all of which goes to RTÉ. TG4, which most people think provides public service broadcasting, is funded directly from the Exchequer. Given people are concerned about rising prices, will the Tánaiste commit that the licence fee will not be going up for the remainder of this Government?

I can certainly say we have no plans to increase the licence fee. I cannot make that commitment for the duration of the Government but there are certainly no plans at the moment to increase it. I appreciate that it is de facto a compulsory charge. Anyone who has a television has to pay it, although, in fact, people who do not have a television even though they are watching the services, perhaps on an iPad or different device, do not have to pay it but are still availing of those services. The main thing we want to do is find a way to increase collection. I understand about 10% or 15% non-payment is the current issue, plus the cost of collection. What I would like to see is a better means of collection-----

In return for what?

-----which would mean we would not have to increase it for a number of years. That is being worked on at the moment.