Mr. Bob Collins:

I will be brief in my opening remarks as the committee has the papers and it might be more productive to allow as much time as possible for exchanges with members of the committee. The review of the funding of public broadcasters is one of the very significant responsibilities that is placed upon the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, BAI, under the 2009 legislation. What is intended to be a five-yearly review hereafter was undertaken for the first time on this occasion. It was, therefore, the first substantive opportunity the authority had to review, in full detail, the issues that had arisen in terms of determining what is the appropriate and adequate level of funding for public broadcasters. To that end, we engaged external consultants, Crowe Howarth, to review the position, take account of relevant European practice, take account of the views of the Irish audience in terms of research, and review, in detail, the five-year submissions made by both by RTE and by TG4.

We took the view that in considering the adequacy of funding and future funding for the two public broadcasters, it was not sufficient simply to consider those on their own and that we had to take into account the wider broadcasting environment, the role of the independent production sector and, clearly in a sense as an underlining starting point, the needs, expectations and entitlements of the Irish audience. That is the reason in our view there is a regulatory framework to ensure that broadcasting serves the needs of an audience as well as ensuring that all of the other regulatory elements are discharged and there is compliance with domestic and European law.

We were very conscious of a number of things. The first is that we live in a time of significant economic difficulty from which broadcasters have not been immune. Even if there had been no economic downturn, we live in a time of extraordinary challenge for broadcasting. There is major change in terms of technology and how people consume content. The range of channels available to Irish audiences is greater than ever and the rate of growth has been dramatic in recent years. The transition from analogue to digital underlines and reinforces that reality. Patterns of consumption are changing. It is true that television channels as we know them are still very robust in terms of the extent to which they are the way through which people get access to their content, but we cannot be complacent because very significant change is taking place.

We are conscious of the fact that there is a growing imbalance between the range of domestic content and the range of international content available to an Irish audience. This is significant for a variety of reasons. It has very significant public policy implications but it has always been explicitly and implicitly the intention of Irish broadcasting legislation for more than 50 years that Irish content for an Irish audience is a key part of the role of public broadcasting. We also recognise the fact that all broadcasting serves a public and social purpose. Broadcasting has a crucial role to play in the democratic life of this country in terms of providing information to citizens on which they can make the kind of decisions that are central to the life of this State. Broadcasting also has a crucial social and community role to play in terms of giving people a real sense of the realities of the communities in which they live. Thus, we felt that not only was it important to look at the contributions RTE and TG4 make in terms of Irish content, it was important to recognise the contribution that other broadcasters like TV3 make. TV3 has been consistently increasing the range of its Irish content while the same is true of Setanta in terms of its sports provision. The comprehensive array of national, regional, local and community radio stations all contribute substantially.

Having reviewed the detail of the work undertaken by Crowe Horwath and the submissions made by the two broadcasters, we took a number of views and made a number of decisions which formed the recommendations we submitted to the Minister, as the law obliges us to do. I will mention a number of those key recommendations. The first is that we did not believe there should any reduction in the level of public funding to either RTE or TG4. The second was that we believed there should be an increase in public funding for RTE. In this, we disagreed with the recommendation of the external consultants. We took that view because we believed the base case, which was the main proposal put forward by RTE in its five-year plan, was not sufficient in terms of the range of service that would be made available to an audience in Ireland at this time of such intense competition. I think RTE would also share the view that this was not the limit of its aspiration.

That recommendation for an increase was conditional on a number of things. First, there needs to be a detailed examination of the extent to which further cost reductions are possible for RTE. A number of reports have indicated that notwithstanding the extent of reductions that have already taken place in RTE's cost base, some further reductions are possible. We want that to be tested because there is no point in attempting to do the impossible and we want to ensure the responsibility that devolves to everybody to look carefully at the way in which public funding is expended is done in a context that makes realistic demands on a public broadcaster that is in receipt of significant public money. Second, we wanted to ensure that within the limits of the commercial possibilities available to it, RTE realises the full potential of that capacity. Third, we wanted to ensure there was an examination of the relationship between the making of in-house productions in RTE and the making of comparable productions by independent producers - not to convert RTE into a publisher-broadcaster but to ensure we have a serious and real basis for determining whether there is full value for the public money being expended.

Our recommendation was that at some point above the current level of its public funding, the Minister should determine a point at which any further increases in public funding for RTE would be matched by a reduction in its commercial revenue - to be achieved by restrictions on either its advertising minutage or sponsorship or a combination of both. This would ensure greater opportunity for all commercial broadcasters to get a larger percentage of the commercial revenue spent on broadcasting in Ireland in order that they can enhance the domestic content of their schedules. In respect of advertising minutage, we make a crucial recommendation from the perspective of commercial radio broadcasters. We argued that the current arrangement whereby three separate regimes operate to determine permitted advertising - the Minister determines it for public broadcasters and the authority determines it for commercial television broadcasters but the statute prescribes it for commercial radio broadcasters - makes no sense. It also results in potential and, we believe, real unfairness. Without prejudging any decision that might fall to be made, we are looking at the possibility that all radio broadcasters should have the same scale of advertising minutage as is available to commercial television broadcasters. We recommended that there be an urgent amendment to the legislation to centralise those decisions relating to advertising minutage in the authority.

Our final recommendation related to TG4. We appreciate that it would be wrong to have any reduction but we wanted to see a greater examination of the way in which the current revenues are deployed as well as an examination of what might be achieved for less or far less of the increase that TG4 was seeking in its public funding. I think that covers the main points by way of introduction. We are happy to respond to any questions members have.