Instead of charging €160 on ownership of a TV set, with the bulk of the proceeds going to RTE, the charge will now be levied on a per-household basis, TV or no TV.

Using the new residential property register it should be possible to improve the collection rate towards 100%. It had been traditionally around 90% but has slipped back in recent years.

The ostensible reason for the new basis of charge is the fact that people can now access television channels on laptops and on smartphones, without owning a TV. Apparently you will shortly be able to watch television on your wristwatch. Eventually TV and internet will no doubt be available on your toothbrush or your key-ring.

Rather than extend the annual tax on TV sets to laptops, smartphones, wristwatches, toothbrushes and key-rings, the minister has wisely opted for a more ascertainable tax base, namely a poll tax on houses.

The tax (sorry, charge) will in all likelihood be piggybacked on to the residential property tax, with most of the enhanced proceeds headed in the same direction as under the current system, namely towards the Donnybrook headquarters of RTE. It will be, in effect, an earmarked uniform property tax with the proceeds ring-fenced largely for the subvention of the state-owned media, RTE (and TG4).

The motivation for the change is clear enough. RTE has been funded roughly half-and-half over the years through the license fee and advertising revenue. Both revenue sources have been in sharp decline.

Advertising revenue for most Irish media companies is down by a quarter since the peak of the bubble and circulations are suffering too. More people are ducking the TV license fee and the new collection system will effectively make the €160 charge impossible to evade. Revenue should increase without an increase in the level of charge.

Those who pay their license fee (the vast majority, over 80% of households) will pay nothing extra and will, if the charge is simply added to the property tax they must pay anyhow, be relieved of an annual nuisance.

It has always been a pretence that the license fee was a kind of subscription to watch RTE. It was an annual tax on the ownership of a TV set, paid by set-owners regardless of viewing habits. This is now to be replaced with a surcharge on the residential property tax, no doubt a more efficient collection system, but the minister is replacing one earmarked tax, for the benefit largely of the state broadcaster, with another and likely more bountiful tax.

When RTE was a state monopoly, as it was until the licensing of competing private radio and TV stations twenty five years ago, none of this mattered very much. But the advent of competing broadcasters makes a nonsense of the dual-funding model. In Britain, the BBC does not accept advertising but is the exclusive beneficiary of the license fee.

The independent TV and radio companies have the advertising market to themselves, which results in some semblance of competitive equality between them. In Ireland, RTE has been receiving most of the license fee but also dominates the advertising market, since the state subvention allows it to produce better programming than its competitors and hence to attract a stronger share of listeners and viewers. This in turn ensures the lion’s share of the advertising market.

RTE has total annual revenues roughly seven times those of TV3. There will never be meaningful competition in broadcasting in Ireland until some approximate equality of arms is created between RTE and its rivals.

The minister is seeking the public’s views on the implementation of the new ‘device-independent charge’. However the consultation document studiously avoids issuing any invitation to comment on the distribution of the proceeds.

The background document prepared by minister Rabbitte’s officials eschews a definitive estimate but it is clear that revenue, at the existing charge level, could increase substantially, perhaps by as much as €40 or €50 million per annum. This is because current evaders, in households and in the business sector, would now have to pay.

There is a pressing need however for a new broadcasting policy, and not just for a more efficient method of collecting earmarked taxes for the dominant state-owned media company.