Photo by Almost four out of ten people are now not paying their annual €160 TV licence fee.
According to official figures from the Department of Media, the number of licence's paid for in the first seven days of this month was 9,361, down from 15,030 the same week last year.
This represents a loss of €907,200 in just one week.
Journalist with the Irish Times, Jack-Horgan Jones says the national broadcaster could be facing a massive black hole of forty million euro in revenues:
"You could argue it's become more serious because it has grown, it has worsened, it has metastasized from a scandal around pay and disclosure, to the wider, arguably more systemic issue that is now facing the broadcaster."
"And where you can see that issue breaking water and where you can see it become visible is in these figures of people who are paying their licence fee is dropping, week on week, month on month."
