Terry Leyden (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Ms Forbes, Ms Cronin and their respective teams to this very interesting meeting. We are all deeply concerned about the cutbacks taking place in RTÉ because we all respect the company and the service it provides. RTÉ's coverage of Brexit, for instance, through its correspondents in Brussels and London, kept us up to speed with developments. RTÉ provides a public service and we, as a society, generally view it as our broadcaster. We are all in this together. This committee spent considerable time in discussions and brought forward very strong recommendations. The Chairman is very patient and brought through a very good report, about which we may not all be madly keen because nobody wants to charge people.

One of the biggest problems at the moment is that we are facing an early election. I predict it will take place on 22 February 2020.