Mr. Rory Coveney:

In one sense, the commission is welcome. These are questions which need to be teased out, namely, the structure of the funding arrangements, the operators, what public service means and so on. There are examples of what Deputy Lawless is talking about, of creating a contestable fund for broadcasting. In New Zealand, for example, it has led to a massive diminution of public broadcasting. A series of reviews has been done on it. Where one just breaks up the money and a grant-giver just allocates it to individual programme makers, one loses all sorts of benefits in culture and in an integrated newsroom that delivers news reporting across multiple channels. I am sure many of these issues will be teased out in the context of this upcoming discussion. Many of them were already teased out in the context of the committee's report, but Deputy Lawless is right to ask the question.