Mr. Noel Curran:

In terms of the Deputy's opening remarks - I do not think there was a question in them - we are concerned about the genuine public concern over fees paid to some of our presenters. I have said publicly, and I say it again, that it was RTE's fault and not the presenters because people will negotiate the highest fee they can. We became aware of the matter and have taken significant action. We have reduced it by over 30%, as I have outlined, and when the process is complete, it will be closer to 40%. RTE is publicly funded and is in a very privileged and powerful situation within Ireland, so we expect criticism. We will get political criticism and a lot of other criticism. We were responding to what we felt was public concern around the issue when we took the initiatives we did.

In terms of the future of 2FM, we are not happy with how 2FM is performing, and I have made that clear publicly. We have introduced a significant amount of change in that regard. We have pushed that change through but it has been difficult for everyone involved over recent months. We want to see a better performance by 2FM, and both I and senior management in radio have made that clear.

In terms of some of the issues around 2FM, if one looks at other public service broadcasters and if one goes back to legislation, the Amsterdam protocol has accepted the public service broadcaster's need to produce as wide a range of programming as possible, including entertainment and other programming. That has been backed up in the past eight to ten years by two separate resolutions from the Council of Europe. Our own Broadcasting Act says that RTE needs to service all audiences. If one looks at other public service broadcasters, one can see that the BBC, Austria, Belgium, Poland, Portugal and Croatia have a station like 2FM. I can list 15 European countries where the public service broadcaster has a similar station. I understand that the matter is a cause for concern, particularly for the commercial radio sector. As much as 41% of 2FM's audience is under 35 years, it has a weekly reach of 800,000 people and a daily reach of 400,000 people but half of the commercial minutage of commercial rivals. We have plans for 2FM, we are not happy with it, we are introducing change and we expect it to improve its performance.

I ask my colleague, Mr. Bakhurst, to comment on overseas coverage and regional activity.