Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I remind members and witnesses to turn off their mobile phones or switch them to flight mode as they interfere with the sound system and make it difficult for the parliamentary reporters to report the proceedings of the meeting.

Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official, either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

This meeting has been convened to consider the Revised Estimate for Public Services: Vote 29 - Communications, Climate Action and Environment which was referred by the Dáil to this committee. The gross allocation for 2017, including a capital carryover is €528.2 million. I welcome the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Deputy Denis Naughten, the Minister of State at the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Deputy Seán Kyne who will be joining us later, and their officials. As Ministers are present, officials should not speak in public session. I thank the Minister for the briefing material provided which has been circulated. I also thank the officials for their open and constructive dialogue with the committee secretariat's financial scrutiny team in developing their briefing document for this meeting.

I inform the Minister that the committee has agreed to proceed programme by programme and will initially focus on specific subheads before broaching any questions relating to the remainder of the programme. I will refer to the briefing document prepared by the financial scrutiny team of the committee secretariat to guide our consideration of the Revised Estimates.

We will start with programme A, communications. I invite the Minister to make a short statement giving a high level overview of the programme and ask him to be as concise as possible.