Mr. Bob Collins:

That argument can cut both ways. Under the law, we have an obligation to look at the funding of the public broadcasters. That is what this task is. That is why the focus is on the funding of the public broadcasters. We are not here to prop up RTE. RTE is perfectly capable of propping itself up and that is not our task. We were looking at the extent to which RTE discharges its obligations based on the money it gets. We looked at the extent to which its schedule adequately serves the Irish audience in the present and future environment. We looked at what conditions would apply to any additional income.

We did not propose an immediate increase in the licence fee; we specifically said there should not be. We did not suggest that in this moment of economic difficulty additional funding should be given to RTE. We specifically said that the level of service planned by RTE in its five-year plan is insufficient to meet the needs of an Irish audience. RTE needs to look at every possible cost reduction available to it and the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources has initiated a review of what is possible in that respect. If there are specific plans for additional programming which meet the needs of an Irish audience and which are public service in character, then we would support additional funding for RTE.

At other times we focus on the needs of commercial radio stations and commercial broadcasters generally. The issue of advertising is one where we believe it is unfair at the moment that minutage is available to commercial television stations that is not available to commercial broadcasters. However, we cannot do anything about that because the law specifies what the provision is. Whatever about everything else, we did not write the law.

We also believe that there should be a mechanism to ensure that RTE has less commercial revenue in the future and that a smaller percentage of its funding comes from commercial sources in order that a greater level of commercial funding would be available to commercial broadcasters, whether on television and radio. We did not write this document to prop up RTE. We are statutorily obliged to support public service broadcasting. Our statutory task here was to review the issue of the funding for RTE and TG4.