Mr. Paul Farrell:

From a Virgin Media point of view, the question touches on the point I made about the platform. As Ms Ní Chaoindealbháin mentioned, we are heavily dependent on the independent sector to create our content. We broadcast our own content from our studio every day but we also have programmes such as "Gogglebox" and "Living With Lucy", as well as many specials. We had a partnership with the Sunday Worldrecently for a documentary on John Gilligan, which was a good example of newspapers and television coming together and co-funding a project. The programme generated an audience of about 300,000, which is pretty good for that type of content. That shows there are plenty of opportunities for producers, the creators and talent in this creative industry, to come together and create stuff that will, economically, have an audience and also drive greater awareness of key issues. Not everything can be commercially driven.

As a broadcaster with a platform, that is where we can offer the most value. The only question is how we can come together. Ms Ní Chaoindealbháin mentioned programmes such as "Blood" and "The Deceived", which involved local scriptwriters, production companies and other talent creating content, and have gone global, been recognised and won awards. That can happen at every level, once we bring everything together more tightly.There is a reliance on the various rounds of the sound and vision scheme, which are announced once or twice a year and are quite modest. The rest of the money sits there, as was mentioned, and may or may not be spent depending on who puts pressure on the organisation. If that issue was looked at more strategically, there would be more opportunities, particularly in respect of the Irish language, culture, music and writing, for these guys to get a fair crack of the whip.