Michael Colreavy (Sligo-North Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our guests and wish them a happy 25th anniversary. I understand their frustration and I know that they need much more than patronising comments from members. However, it would be wrong of me if I did not state that the area in which I live would be so much the poorer without independent radio. The loss of the independent radio would be massive to both public service and general broadcasting in every area throughout the country. The fact that listenership figures are on the rise is evidence of that.

Our guests' words did not exactly fall on deaf ears in 2013, because we proposed that a certain proportion of the licence fee should be set aside for local and community radio. Unfortunately, our proposal was not accepted. When the discussions relating to the introduction of the broadcasting charge began, we made the same proposal. I do not know what is going to be contained in the Indecon report but I look forward to reading it. I do not know whether it is intended that Indecon should put forward recommendations in respect of the mix of funding models that exist. However, I am sure it will examine the public service content of independent radio. I spoke to a number of backbenchers when we were drafting our proposal to assign some of the licence fee to local and community radio in order to discover what people think of this matter. I received a fairly standard range of responses from those who would oppose such a development.

There is the idea that money should not be taken from RTE because advertising revenue has gone south for it as much as for anybody else and it is struggling badly. Interestingly, the second point was that these people are in it to make money and there is the question of whether we would subsidise newspapers if their revenue was declining. There are people who do not understand that a big element of what local radio does is public service broadcasting in the truest sense of the term. It caters for local areas.

When Mr. Collins argued that the funding model was broken, I take it he was referring to the reduction in advertising revenue, which has declined almost 50% since 2008. In 2007 and 2008 a report was completed indicating a profit margin of 4%, on average, across stations. What is the level now? I am afraid it could be near zero. There is something wrong with a situation in which the number of customers is increasing but income is going down. That is illogical and we cannot get a complete picture from such a jigsaw.

The statement argued that there must be balance between RTE and independent broadcasters. I would hate to think that we could not have a straight broadcasting service as we need it. In general, RTE does a very good job. Nonetheless, I agree that there are elements being supported financially which are not public service broadcasting, as any fair-minded person would say.