Ms Dee Forbes:

The question about the EBU report. It was a voluntary request on our part for benchmarking and to have guidance for the future. The report set out good recommendations, all of which are in train. I will cite a few examples.

In terms of internal culture, one recommendation involved reconsidering project management to bridge the gap between announcing the new vision, going for a strong training plan and change management policy. We are going through a transformation and have put in place a number of elements. We have a change management leadership group which is representative of the organisation, for example. It meets regularly to drive the change agenda. It works closely with employee groups in order to discuss change and keep its ear to the ground concerning what is happening.

Communicating with staff is another important element. During a change process there is never enough communication. That is something on which we have worked hard. In the past year we have set in motion a number of focus and work groups. We have a group of 141 people across the organisation with whom we check in regularly to obtain views. We have increased our communication on the hub, our internal website. As Ms Cusack mentioned, this morning saw the launch of our diversity and inclusion policy. We are communicating in an attempt to help staff to understand what is happening and, importantly, receive feedback. We have a feedback loop via email. Much is happening on the communication front.

The structure piece was important. It came across loud and clear in the EBU report that RTÉ had a silo structure. We did and it served us well for many years. Given that the industry is now dependent on collaboration and understanding the audience, we have changed it. The structure is more reflective of audiences and content. With our content, we are putting the audience at the heart of the organisation. We are thinking about it as an audience first and the distribution mode second. The old silos of television, radio and digital are breaking down. They have not yet been broken down because it takes a while for a structure to bed in, but the early signs are good. There is some great cross-thinking across the organisation and projects that would never have happened two years ago are now happening. For example, we would typically have had a radio event on Culture Night.

This year it was streamed on RTÉ Player; it was on radio and a great live event in Collins Barracks. We are seeing a real transferral of ideas across the organisation and the organisation working on ideas in tandem. Audience needs were also talked about. It was mentioned that we needed to rethink the audience research in order to inform decisions. That is at the core of what we are doing and we have a new insights team helping with it that is working hand in hand with programme makers to help to influence what the audience is looking for, to identify what its needs are and, importantly, to reflect the diversifying nature of the population. We have to reflect what is happening in Ireland and through research we now understand it much more.

They are a few examples of initiatives that are ongoing.