Mr. Kevin Bakhurst:

To address the Senator's point on foreign coverage, we do rely on EBU, which, for people who do not know, is the European Broadcasting Union. We are a member of it and so are most public service broadcasters across Europe. We pay to be a member of it. We get a good supply of material from our partners from all countries across Europe. We also subscribe to Reuters. We get material from it. That is another source of video material around the world and across Europe.

The Senator said he met the Chinese ambassador. I have had the pleasure of meeting the Chines ambassador too and hearing some of his perspectives. I think the perspectives of people like the Chinese are important. This is something that Ingrid Miley brought back from her trip with the President to China recently. She brought back some other stories and did some other coverage while she was there.

Do we have a western view? Possibly we do. I think sometimes we have to try to be careful about that. In our reporting of Ukraine and Russia, for example, we have to ensure that we represent all the viewpoints, whether they are a Western view or a view that is diametrically opposed to the West. That is something we need to be cautious about.

I am sure that Deirdre McCarthy will agree with Senator John Whelan's view on the scheduling of the Oireachtas report. We tried to give it other airings on "News Now" as well as on RTE One. There is an element of whether it is ready but there is also an element of the programming and scheduling decisions on RTE One. I know this is a continual point of discussion when we come here about whether it is for insomniacs but it still gets a very good audience whatever time it runs at.

I agree with what the members of the committee have said about concentration of resources on regional coverage. When there were tough decisions to be made about shutting some of the regions or taking money out of foreign coverage we chose to keep the regions open and do them in a different way in terms of our news bureaus around the country. It is a difficult balancing act because there is an expectation from the audience as well that they get good and comprehensive international coverage and an Irish perspective on international coverage, so we are constantly weighing that up. I would say that certainly my first priority and that of RTE is that we report Ireland properly to the audience and then that we report the rest of the world to the audience. That is a key aim of our coverage.

Long-wave and the diaspora have been touched upon and Mr. McGuire has talked about that a little bit. It is worth making the point that we are constantly finding new ways of reaching the diaspora and, in fact, some of the new ways the diaspora are reached are through the news website; the RTE website; the international player that we have just launched; and GAAGO. These are all new ways of reaching the audience and giving them different products that we have not given them before. The take-up of the international player has been impressive already within the first few weeks. Almost 40,000 people have downloaded the app. There is a real appetite for that and it is a priority, as we have said publicly before, to serve the Irish diaspora, whether they are coming back in future or staying abroad.

On Oireachtas TV, I think Senator John Whelan was slightly unfair on RTE. I know this is a bone of contention. The Senator might shake his head as I shook mine when he was making the point but I think, as he is aware, the pricing on SAORVIEW is not a matter for RTE. We do not have the ability to give the platform to Oireachtas TV. RTE does not have the platform. SAORVIEW has statutes and they govern what people have to be charged to be on there. It is a regulated statute that RTE does not have a concession over. We have been trying, as part of the consortium that runs SAORVIEW, to bring down the cost, because we are big supporters of Oireachtas TV, and we would like to try to have it on SAORVIEW. The reason the cost has come down so far is because there have been other new entrants to SAOIRVIEW, such as UTV Ireland. The more broadcasters who are on there the greater the reduction for everyone who is one there because there is an overall cost of SAORVIEW which has to be divided up and there are statutes to govern that. It is not within the gift of RTE to give it for free. What we can do is try to build up a portfolio which brings the cost down as far as is possible and that is what we have done so far and what we will try to do in the future. We would very much like to see it on SAORVIEW.