Mr. Barry Ryan:

I thank the Senator for the questions. It is an important point which we have not touched on in our discussion this morning that the general scheme is framed in line with the report of the Oireachtas joint committee in 2016 and subsequent public consultations that took place in the intervening period. The outcome of all that was that we should start with a commission, establish it on a statutory basis, which we are doing, and give it an initial set of functions with a view to building on those functions over time. Not only are we not ruling out additional functions, we are already working on what functions could be further assigned to the commission when it is up and running.

The Senator mentioned media literacy and the campaign being run by RTÉ. It is true that there are other organisations in this space. It is worth mentioning the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, as well as Media Literacy Ireland and the Be Media Smart campaign they ran.

That also helps in this particular space. As the Minister of State said, I would not rule out a role for the commission in the future because the intention is certainly to build on its functions over time.