Ms Dee Forbes:

As a national broadcaster, one of our obligations is to ensure that we foster, nurture and develop creative talent. RTÉ and I take this very seriously because that is the next generation that will come through. What is incredibly said in all of this, given where we are as an organisation from a funding point of view, is that we typically work with the independent creative sector such that we make some programming in-house and we also contract out as part of our obligations. A number of years ago we were spending €80 million in the independent sector on programming coming to RTÉ from outside. This has halved over the years, again because of the reduction in funding. I am concerned about the sector, as is the sector generally, because without RTÉ being strong in this area the sector is under-developing. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, the sector is desperate for a solution on the licence fee because the licence fee is one of big mechanism in this country to develop creative output but it is not being collected to the fullest extent. This is a problem. A few of us were in London last week at an event where the Irish ambassador was celebrating the great collaboration that goes on between the UK and the Irish creative sectors. There was a lot of Irish talent there, including actors and comedians, because they do not have jobs at home.

They are there because we in particular are not able to invest like we should do in that sector. That is a worry and is one of the biggest arguments that we as a society need to think about as we look to developing for the future. Without that creative culture, we are seriously missing out.