Mr. Kevin Bakhurst:

I think I have heard the Deputy's line about insomniacs before from the Minister. It is tricky. There must quite a lot of insomniacs because the audience is quite substantial, even though the programme is on late at night. The other thing we have managed to do by producing it more quickly is that we run it earlier now.

We re-run it the following morning, so using the News Now channel and also using online, people do get that opportunity. The News Now channel, which is basically available in Saorview and UPC homes, covers a lot of business here and a lot of committees, as well as business in the Dáil itself. That is well viewed and we cover a lot of parliamentary occasions on that channel. People do appreciate that.

The question was asked about monitoring social media and we do monitor it systematically. The central communications department at RTE monitors all social media about programmes. I was monitoring the Ukrainian-Russian episode myself. I went out quite quickly to respond to it, much to the disgust of my press officer. I did so because I thought we needed to respond to it straight away. Sometimes it is a good gauge of where the audience is but, on the other hand, it is not representative. A lot of people are on there because they have their own causes. It is useful to monitor it overall and is quite useful sometimes to gauge how a programme is going.

There were a lot of comments about "Prime Time" last night and a high level of interest in what they were doing last night. On the other hand, a lot of people just have singular obsessions and use social media, including the hash tag of "Prime Time", to come on and say whatever they like to say. That is their prerogative but it is not, therefore, a definitive guide to where the audience is. It is a useful tool, however, and we do monitor it. Weekly, the central communications department gives us a summary of the social media activity which we now include in our audience information. We have whatever e-mails or letters come in and we also have a summary of social media activity and comments on social media. That goes to all programme makers and is available within RTE.