Mr. Kevin Bakhurst:

It was designed to be an authored report, which is designed to be provocative.

On the question of Limerick, I spoke publicly at the time on the matter. I think Deputy Patrick O’Donovan is referring to the coverage of the great granny event in Limerick. What was not considered at the time was that we did a full piece on "Six One News" on the Friday evening. In my view the mistake we made is that we should have done a second piece over the weekend when we saw the size of the crowds on the streets. I said publicly that I thought that was a mistake. We subsequently did other things to try to put that right. One of the things we did was a “Nationwide” programme about Limerick which featured the great granny event. “Nationwide” is also part of news and current affairs. The great granny event featured in the news review of the year. However, I accept the lack of coverage was a mistake. We should have done more over the weekend given that there were more than 100,000 people on the streets of Limerick. Even if we did a piece on the Friday night we should have done something more at the weekend on it.

Deputy Patrick O’Donovan referred to local radio stations and asked whether they should get a slice of the licence fee. That is something the Deputy has raised previously. I will go back to what the director general said about it, which is that I am not sure whether it would be appropriate for the licence fee to be given to some of the local radio stations which are run by large multinational companies. In a way, that is a matter for future debate.

In terms of fixing things which are not broken, the demise of "Questions & Answers", which I know had a very good reputation, was before my time. Sometimes there can be a perception about fixing things that are not broken in that one wants to refresh and revise. I am not talking specifically about "Questions & Answers" because I was not here when that decision was taken, but there are some programmes that one does not want to just wither away, but one wants to refresh and change the schedule. On the other hand, one does want to nurture things that are well liked and well respected. There is always a difficult balance to be struck on that one.

On nepotism, from my experience I am very confident there is no nepotism at RTE. We are very public about the competitions we have. They are open competitions. Unfortunately, in recent times due to financial reasons we have not been able to go outside often enough to recruit people but when we have had the opportunity to do that we go outside and open up the process to get the best talent in from wherever it comes. I can only speak for myself but the senior management within RTE would not stand for nepotism. We are funded by the licence fee. We are a public organisation and fairness does not just apply to news coverage, it applies to recruitment policies as well. If ever we were to come across that I would take a very dim of it and I know that is true of the director general also.

As for the last point, Deputy Patrick O’Donovan is correct that he has raised the question of what presenters are paid each time I have been before the committee. We do disclose what the presenters are paid. We do not cover it up. We disclose it with a time lag because it is a very competitive marketplace and if we say what we are paying people now they will be picked off one by one. Our duty is to the licence fee payer to try to get best value when we pay. We do pay presenters a lot of money in the eyes of a lot of people but it is a marketplace out there and we have seen in the past 18 months that we have lost prominent presenters. One of the reasons we have lost one or two of the prominent presenters is because people were very well aware of what figure they should offer. If we put the figure out there too soon we could end up potentially paying more than we do at the moment. Many of the presenters are on contracts and when the contracts come up, they will be subject to other offers, as others have been in the last couple of years, and it is a job to persuade them to stay.

Anything which puts upward pressure on fees is a bad thing for us. As the committee knows, we have managed to bring down presenters' fees by 30% in recent years and that is an ongoing process. We are well aware of political and public concern about the level of presenters' fees and we will continue to try to push that down, but it is in the face of considerable market pressure. Mr. Nally may have more to say about Eamon Dunphy and Claire Byrne since that was one question.