TV licences drop 13% in 2023

Figures released by the Department of Media show a 13% drop in TV licences in Ireland in 2023.

824,278 licence fees were collected by An Post in 2023, with 732,532 of those being renewals; down 123,000 from 2022 figures.

Licence fee renewals have seen a steady drop over the last five years thanks to the likes of streaming services, but the drop in licence fee renewals became more acute after the Ryan Tubridy scandal broke last June.

Between June and December, 378,974 TV licences were bought, which represented a dramatic drop from 502,495 in the same time period in 2022.

The public switching off from RTÉ has created another unwanted headache for the state broadcaster, with the lost revenue translating to €19 million.

The financial woes at RTÉ have led to Government bailouts – on the condition of showing major transparency reforms – and a round of redundancies at RTÉ which have been sharply criticised by unions.

In November, RTÉ announced their plans for long-term financial sustainability, which included cutting Fair City from five nights a week to four, ramping up the number of independent productions, and increasing the amount of money spent on cheap to produce reality programming.

Speaking last August, when it became apparent that public trust in RTÉ had dropped, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar called on the public to still pay the licence fee.

Varadkar said, “I would certainly encourage people to continue to pay their licence fee.”

“Notwithstanding the recent controversy, the licence fee pays for our news, pays for arts broadcasting, sports, children’s, Irish-language broadcasting – things that are of real value and I would encourage people to continue to pay their licence fee.”

The issue of licence fees has become something of a political football, with Government parties stating they would not provide funding to RTÉ unless they showed they were taking transparency reforms seriously, while opposition parties such as People Before Profit suggested scrapping the licence fee model altogether and making RTÉ an ad-free venture.