Noel Harrington (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We often get taken by the Kerry people but we will try to get the hurling one out of the way first.

I thank Noel Curran and his colleagues for attending. The licence fee and public funding brings us together today. For many households the €160 annual licence fee is a lot of money but I believe it is good value for money for the content we get. If I took my family to Croke Park for a concert or whatever, I would probably end up paying twice that. If we are talking about fees, we should consider the context.

On the content, much of it is subjective. I would not appreciate all of the content but the content I am interested in is of extremely good quality. That is what encourages most of us to watch RTE as much as we do. Obviously, we do not watch everything and therefore we rely on the listenership figures and, increasingly, we are getting better value for money.

On the financial side, we are presented with reports on a constant basis, many of them from public bodies, and every one of them will indicate that in the past five years the organisation's funding is down 10% or 20%, that it has maintained its service levels, done exceptionally well and so on. I could mention every local authority doing exactly the same. Having listened to many of their representatives for so long, one has to conclude that such huge reductions in funding and maintaining service levels was difficult and painful but there were many easily extracted costs.

Now it is coming to the more difficult areas in terms of achieving those financial objectives. RTE is not the only body to experience that kind of reduction in funding and still claim it maintains the service. While it does so, this applies throughout the nation and everyone has suffered in that regard.

On the strategy, I listened to a report this week indicating that companies such as Facebook are investing millions of dollars in new technologies. Is a five-year strategy for RTE too long in an environment where technology is changing as rapidly in broadcasting, advertising and all the different headings? Is a five-year strategy tying the organisation down and not allowing it the flexibility it needs to adapt?

The witnesses mentioned the potential threats to the Irish market by the global players that are increasingly coming in and taking the advertising revenue. What efforts is RTE making to go against the flow and target the much vaunted and publicised diaspora of tens of millions of people throughout the world who might be interested in accessing and paying for RTE content on a daily basis?

Is RTE realising the full potential of Saorview? Mr. Curran said earlier that it was a great success - more than RTE had bargained for. However, could more be done there?

I listened to what Mr. Kennedy had to say on libel, etc. The RTE submission stated that our system is dangerous for freedom of expression and that cannot be ignored. From both this meeting and in engagements we have had with other media organisations, it is clear they would like to have something along the lines of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution apply here. I am not sure if that is the right way to go. We must also remember that the United States also has an amendment relating to the right to bear arms. While I know certain people in this country would like the right to bear arms, I do not believe many of us would agree that is the right way to go. It is about achieving a balance.

In that regard reference was made to the recent controversy on the "Saturday Night Live" programme and "A Mission to Prey" which this committee addressed approximately 18 months ago. In any or all of the examples he gave of the different jurisdictions in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, United States, could Mr. Kennedy say that either of those two would not have ended up with the same result? Are we using those two issues as a Trojan horse to make a case to change legislation? I agree we might need to make a change because I have read RTE's examples of how opinion has to be dealt with in Ireland and the opinion of someone else on whose opinion it relies is dealt with. It seems a bit onerous, but we need to be careful we do not use extreme cases that equally might not have succeeded in other jurisdictions to make a more substantial case to revise legislation in the area.