Mr. Brian Dalton:

I will comment generally on the marketplace and why we referenced the nature of the competition. Ireland is the most open market for advertising in Europe. The number of stations that sell advertising in Ireland has doubled since 2008. We are dual-funded so 53% of our revenue comes from the licence fee.

The balance must come from other sources, but there has been a huge decline in our ability to generate income through other means because of the intense competition that now exists. This issue is crucially important in terms of policy, because the amount of revenue we have is likely to decrease unless some stability can be brought to bear around our public funding. We are looking at the potential for achieving efficiencies that will help to create that stability but, overall, the amount of funding available to us for public service broadcasting is in decline because the advertising market is being shared by so many different players, many of them major international players. To give an example, the subscription market in Ireland is valued at €600 million and there is massive discounting and content dumping taking place which is targeting advertising expenditure. One cannot do anything about that - it is the nature of free competition - but it does have implications for an organisation like RTE which is dual funded.