Mr. Johnny O'Hanlon:

On the point on the impartiality of news and Deputy Cannon's point, it is already the case in this country, and rightly so, that RTÉ is getting licence fee funding for national broadcasting. It has not been proven that there has been any conflict regarding its level of in-depth reportage over the years, particularly regarding government activities and the activities of politicians. I do not regard that as a major concern at all. We certainly hope that funding of the kind in question will come out of the recommendations from the Future of Media Commission and that it will come under the remit of the new Minister responsible for media.

If I could go back to an earlier point about our relevance as news providers in the country, our newspapers are not only newspapers, as Mr. Mulrennan has said, in the printed format, but household brands in every county. We are now multi-news providers. We are providing news in print, online and on mobile. We host many events of great significance locally, running from business to culture to sport. We are also community leaders. When communities are struggling or have issues, it is their local newspaper and local radio station that flags them. Key to all of this is the level of investment our members are making in reporters. We employ more than 1,000 reporters, correspondents and columnists who produce trusted news weekly. The most recent piece of Research and Analysis of Media, RAM, research was done this summer and it indicated that our trust level is at 71%. In terms of social media and the fake news cycle, it knocks everything for six.

We have trusted brands. Unless something is done soon, those trusted brands will start to fall off the perch and some day someone is going to wake up and ask how we let that happen. We have had a tsunami since 2008, with the economic crisis when we saw our advertising revenues fall by 60%. We have also had the advent of the mobile phone, Google, Facebook and, lately, the pandemic. Those are our key issues. For now, we need an emergency fund to trade us through the next six months until the economy gets back to some semblance of normality.