Mr. Steve Carson:

That was one of the problems. The proposed format they were working to was not spelled out in detail in advance. Our recommendations in the report are clear that this must be the case. We found that the team, which was fairly small, were all working on regular editions of "The Frontline" in the run up to this. One of key recommendations is that resources need to be provided to allow at least one person to focus on a show like this. We also say in our recommendations that it is not appropriate to have personal friends of the production team or people with a connection to a party running a candidate in an election programme.

Mr. Morrison and I have discussed how this could happen. The reality is that a series of mistakes which interacted with each other were made by a series of people. The weather played a part. If some of these things had happened in isolation, we would not have had the cumulative failure we did have. We noted that there were gaps in experience in the report. It was a relatively inexperienced team working to an unclear brief for which one needs to look to senior management in current affairs. We found that the overall steering committee in RTE received some reports about what the plan was and was aware that the audience selection format was changed from "The Frontline" programme on the general election in March and approved that. We concluded that it was not an appropriate format. RTE has run two editions of "The Frontline" on the fiscal treaty and children's referendum that have been compliant. In future, the steering committee needs to get far more detail and perhaps be more probing about what the format is. That essentially covers what we found.