Mr. Noel Curran:

I thank Deputy Colreavy for his comments. The question of public funding is critical. In the next number of days, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, BAI, will make recommendations as a result of its review. Subsequently, it will become a political decision for the Minister and the Department. I am not party to that decision, but I gather it is imminent.

It is important that we lay out some of the issues. The Minister has stated there will be a new media charge because people are accessing programmes, radio and other content in a range of ways other than through television. Other countries are moving to reflect this fact. There is a danger that the media charge will be seen as a panacea for every ill in the broadcasting industry, something that can solve the commercial sector's problems and whatever problems RTE has. It will not be a panacea. The Department has estimated that it will generate an increase of €20 million in public funding. This estimate is based on reducing evasion by half to 8% and reducing collection costs from 7.5% to 5%. One could claim that if evasion rates fell further, the collection costs arrived at through a tendering process could decrease. There will not be an extra €50 million, €60 million or €70 million in public funding, but there will be more overall.

The case I have been trying to make is that for all the flaws and criticism received by RTE, it is a unique organisation. I understand that competitors see RTE as the biggest problem in the market. RTE has 25% of the radio advertising and there are over 30 channels in Ireland selling advertising to Irish advertisers on Sky. That number is growing. We have reached a critical point, particularly in debating public funding, and we are competing against Sky, which has an income of €7.6 billion; the BBC with an income of €5.6 billion; and the likes of Google. That is the competitive landscape and they all operate in Ireland. Good luck to them as they are very good companies and are very good at what they do.

Where does the Irish media stand in this respect? I came across an interesting and important statistic recently indicating that in the UK, the top three television channels are British-owned and concentrate largely on British content. They are BBC, ITV and Channel 4 and they have 70% of the audience. In Ireland, only the top two companies concentrate and invest in Irish content, and we are 53%. We are reaching a point where because of the prevalence of satellite programming in this country, in particular, we will lose the position of broadcaster of scale that can invest in Irish drama, news and current affairs, and which will make those kinds of decisions. I make the case strongly that RTE should be that type of broadcaster, competing against companies of the scale that we are currently competing against internationally and which operate in this market. We need that scale.

I have stated recently that we are not looking for a free lunch and we all realise how difficult times are, so we have outlined a range of actions and new commitments. We have also talked about commercial footprints. We have tried to respond to the issue but the market is changing so fundamentally that in five or ten years, if we do not have a strong national broadcaster of scale that is required to invest heavily in Irish content, the independent production sector and areas like drama, young people's programming - we have no problem with that - culturally, as a society and politically we will be at a significant loss. That is the context in which I put the debate on RTE's position with regard to the public funding review.