James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Mr. Pitt's business experience is very necessary and welcome. If INM does not sell newspapers it will not have a newspaper. The point is that circulation is not the only metric and may not even be the most important metric; it is one of many. That point is paramount and relates to editorial control. One person runs the business and someone else runs the editorial team.

I have a question on the existing titles and the casualisation of labour. Journalists, photographers and digital staff may be multi-rostered. To what extent has that affected the existing INM titles resulting in job-sharing, people being on casual contracts, cutbacks and perhaps even redundancies? To what extent can we use that to predict what might happen in the new entity if the merger goes ahead? That is a concern.