Mr. Noel Curran:

There has to be a cut-off point in terms of producing it but if we start defining RTE's role, we must ask how we do so. Does one go to a market failure? Does one say RTE's job is to provide anything that commercial television does not provide? In that case, commercial television would basically tell us what programmes we should show. I do not believe the Irish public wants to pay a licence fee for that. It is a question of volume and where the programming sits in our schedule. It usually sits on our second channel late at night. One must ask where it sits, its priority, the expenditure thereon and what should be shown around it.

I believe that RTE should have a wide schedule. If we went too far down that road, we would have serious questions to answer. Our policy of having entertainment programmes is underpinned at European and national level. As I said earlier, it is also underpinned by the public, which wants us to do entertainment programmes as well as everything else.