Mr. Alan Esslemont:

Tá TG4 an-bhuíoch an deis seo a fháil chun labhairt leis an gcomhchoiste Oireachtais seo maidir le maoiniú na craoltóireachta seirbhís poiblí. Tá TG4 ar an togra Gaeilge is dearfaí agus is airde próifíl a rinne Rialtas le 50 bliain. Tá lán-tacaíocht faighte aige ó gach Rialtas agus ó gach páirtí polaitiúil ó 1992. Tá aitheantas náisiúnta agus gradaim agus duaiseanna náisiúnta agus idirnáisiúnta faighte go leanúnach ag cláracha agus ag pearsana TG4. Tá ár gcláracha ceannaithe agus craolta ag craoltóirí thar lear freisin agus tá ábhar Gaeilge ár gcainéil ar fáil ar fud an domhain.

Public service broadcasting, PSB, serves national and regional audiences and by dint of quality, impartiality and public trust can help form the cultural values and democratic citizenship of a country. To those of us who have experienced public service broadcasting in more than one European country, it is clear that Ireland has been very well served, both culturally and democratically by its public service broadcasting services.

Economically, as displayed in the recent UK public and political debate on the future of the BBC, public service broadcasters have a key role in stoking the engine of audio-visual creativity.

In a globalised world of content, skills and successful programming are increasingly tradeable and traded and the new BBC Royal Charter puts all of the British television sector in very strong position to exploit this global market. The television producers association, PACT, estimates that the UK television production sector has revenues of £3 billion and that international TV revenues grew at a rate of 13.4% in 2015. However the biggest source of revenue for the UK’s production companies remains their primary UK commissions, underlining the importance of public service broadcasting, PSB, as the major driver for the creation of international revenues.

As recognised in the 2009 Broadcasting Act, TG4 occupies a central space in the PSB landscape in Ireland. TG4 operates as a publisher-broadcaster, a model which allows us to combine creativity, audience-focus, and nimbleness. The great majority of TG4's Irish-made programmes are commissioned from independent production companies throughout Ireland and TG4 spends 90% of its annual programme budget on independent production, that was €21.2 million in 2015 and the figure increased in 2016. In 2017 we intend to increase our out-of-house production spend and to take measures to encourage stability and development in the independent sector.

There are 200,000 people, of all ages, who live in the Republic of Ireland and speak Irish on a daily or weekly basis outside of the school environment. This audience displays a full expectation that TG4 will serve them a range of programmes that is as deep, broad and rich as English-speakers in Ireland would expect from RTE One or that British viewers would expect from BBC One. News, drama and light entertainment are the genres most valued by our core audience.

However from its first day of broadcasting in 1996, TG4 has made clear that, in the same way as the Irish language belongs to all of the people of Ireland, TG4 will seek to appeal to all audiences in Ireland at certain points of the day and of the week. Audiences with less fluent Irish, or no Irish at all value TG4’s programming very highly. The largest numbers of this national audience come to us for the genres of music, factual and sport.

It is easy in any debate around the funding of public service broadcasting, to push matters of minority language to the edge of the focused agenda - a single bullet point, a hermetically sealed topic that does not impinge on the major questions regarding broadcasting. This marginalisation has not happened in Wales and the result has been that Cardiff now finds itself, along with London and Manchester, at the centre of a global creative industry. The drama skillset honed during the decades of production of Welsh language drama for S4C was key to the decision by the BBC to produce worldwide drama such as "Doctor Who" in Cardiff. Only countries and regions with a strong domestic television market will bring their skills to the level that allows them break into global markets.

Reports commissioned by the BAI over the last years give clear evidence that TG4 cannot sustain further cuts to its funding. We need to create sustainability in our baseline content funding which is at present very far below that of S4C, the Welsh-language channel, and risks, under the new BBC Royal Charter, falling below that of BBC ALBA, the Scots Gaelic channel.

We are very ambitious for TG4 because we believe that being ambitious for TG4 is being ambitious for Ireland’s culture and for Ireland’s democracy. The funding of public service broadcasting lies at the heart of how that ambition can be enabled. We are most grateful to receive this opportunity to contribute to this public conversation on the funding of public service broadcasting, PSB and see TG4 as a unique asset which lies at the centre of that debate.

Go raibh maith agat.