Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for being late. I was speaking in the Seanad. I welcome the witnesses. I will reiterate a few things I mentioned last week, particularly with regard to local radio and local newspapers. I have proposed that our work programme examine the future of local radio. An increased value has been placed on it because of the pandemic. Only last week there was a huge water outage in half of County Longford and people heard about it on the local radio station. Otherwise, they would not have known. That is just a small matter, but I support any investment that goes to maintaining local radio. Shannonside is my local radio station and it is an invaluable asset. I was grilled many times on the political programmes, but it was fair criticism. I compliment it on the work it has done over this period.

As regards local newspapers, I have a retail business at home and I have seen the decline in sales of the newspapers. I would welcome support for them. I compliment one of the reporters in my local newspaper, Liam Cosgrove, who today won the Local Ireland/National Lottery media award for the newspaper story of the year.

I have some questions for Mr. Lynch of RTÉ. I note that he said there are 121 managers. It appears to be a high number for an organisation.