Mr. Jim Jennings:

There are a couple of points. I can ask my colleagues to respond to a couple of others.

On the finances in RTE, we are in a position where, by and large, every decision that we make has an impact in terms of cuts. I would not say it is death by 1,000 cuts but we are cutting a lot of things around the organisation. Whether it is television programmes not returning or restrictions in certain areas in radio, no matter the cuts they impact on somebody and some part of our service. I would love to be managing director of RTE radio in a period where we have enough money to do what we want to do but I am not alone in the country in struggling with that issue. Probably, in terms of their constituents and the sort of representations that they receive, those in this room would be more aware of it than I am.

We do not pretend that any cuts that we make do not have an impact. What we do is try to find the best possible solution to any cuts or look to see is there an alternative way to offer a programme or service. In some cases, we do not have an alternative to some of the cuts that we have made.

My colleagues in other parts of the organisation, whether in digital, in television or in news, could bore the members to tears with the impact the imposition of the cuts and the lack of funding for RTE is having in terms of our services. Before my time, RTE presented a document to the Government and the committee on a long-term strategy for RTE in terms of its funding and looking forward in terms of the services it could provide. That document, which was our strategy, contained a base-case scenario and what we could do if we had more funding. RTE is currently operating at €14 million less than the base case that we presented to the committee. That is a difficulty for us, and the proposed broadcasting charge is not on the immediate horizon.

We are in a period where we will have to contract to do our business. That is the way it is. It would not be proper for RTE to operate a business knowing that it will have huge losses. That is not the way we are set up. We cannot operate like that.

Last year, we broke even. Given the impositions that I mentioned earlier, we are struggling to break even this year. It will be a consistent struggle for RTE until it is decided what is the adequate funding for the public service broadcaster in this country.

There has been a number of independent reports. We are up to five now from various different sources, including Oliver & Ohlbaum, NewERA and the BAI, all of which recommended that RTE is underfunded, and we agreed with that.

None of us wants to make cuts. None of us wants to have to make these decisions. We would much rather be in a position where we are not doing this. That said, we must ensure that the cuts that we make are the right cuts for our listeners, our viewers and those who use our services.

Deputy Colreavy, in his point on the e-mail correspondence, is correct. In fact, the e-mail correspondences are the easiest ones to resolve because sometimes, as Mr. McGuire stated, they do not know that there is an easy solution for them, there and then. The queries that are not easy to resolve are from those who do not have e-mail, do not have a mobile telephone or do not have FreeSat, Virgin or Sky. That is the purpose of this exercise in respect of consulting with listeners.

It is to identify what is that number, who they are and whether this can be resolved to everyone's satisfaction. In a sense, the Deputy's point is correct but the easy bit to resolve actually concerns those who contact us via e-mail.

When the Deputy mentioned the Northern Ireland issue, I realised I had not addressed an issue raised in the last question concerning the correspondence from the Northern Ireland committee. We have been engaging with it and have sent to it a detailed response. I note that committee has asked this joint committee to pick up this issue with us but we are also quite prepared to engage with them, if they wish, and to visit them on the issue. As for the technical issues regarding the mast and whether long wave could be put on to it, I will defer to my colleague, Mr. Coakley, in this regard.