Ms Dee Forbes:

I will take the RTÉ Player question first. As the Deputy has pointed out, there have been some technical issues. It is worth saying, at the outset, that the nature of the RTÉ Player is complex because it is a combination of live and streamed content, unlike Netflix and unlike Amazon, but Amazon does have some live sport. When one thinks about it, one is getting a stream from Netflix but if a person is watching RTÉ Player live it is a very different entity. Having said that, we have spent a lot of time and money in the last couple of years trying to upgrade it to the best product we can do. In the last eight to 12 months it has improved and, for example, we are seeing that time spent on RTÉ Player at the moment up by about 43%. The amount of content has increased and the quality of the player has improved. We have to develop and enhance it constantly. As the technology improves, so too will our process. I am not aware of the ISL issue but I will come back to the Deputy on it and get her an answer.

On the licence fee and the model to be decided on, there are a couple of things. First of all, in Ireland right now if a person is watching RTÉ on RTÉ Player he or she does not need a licence fee. That is the loophole in the current legislation. We had been talking a lot with the Department about closing that loophole. The UK closed it a number of years ago. If a person is watching the BBC iPlayer in the UK it automatically asks if the viewer has paid the licence fee. If not, it directs the person to the licence fee payment method. The licence fee in Ireland is now the subject of a media commission investigation. Part of that remit is to come up with a model that is best for this country, whether it is device-based or one of the other models. A number of countries around Europe are grappling with this, but there are also many successes such as in Germany, Italy and the Nordic countries. Other countries have managed to solve this. At this stage it is being discussed by the media commission and we hope it will recommend a model in the months ahead.