Mr. Michael O'Keeffe:

On behalf of the BAI, I thank the Chair and members of the committee for inviting us to present and answer questions today. This is important legislation and we hope that our contribution will be of assistance to the committee in the important pre-legislative scrutiny work that they are doing currently and will continue to do over the next number of months. I am joined by my colleague and deputy CEO of the BAI, Ms Craig. We will both answer questions about the various topics that are raised in our submission.

I am sure that members are familiar with the BAI, which was established in 2009. Our current responsibilities including licensing of commercial and community radio stations and television, regulation and the provision of support to independent and public service broadcast media. We also provide funding for programming and archiving related to Irish culture, heritage and experience, through our sound and vision and archiving schemes. Many people will be familiar with the sound and vision fund.

The BAI welcomes the Bill's provision for the functions and the staff of the organisation to be transferred to the new media commission when the legislation is enacted. We believe that this approach will result in the BAI bringing its considerable knowledge and regulatory expertise gained to date, and also the planning work that we have done for the future regulation of on-demand and video-sharing platform services, to make a meaningful and early contribution to the work of the new media commission.

In the document containing our opening statement, of which, I know, members will all have received copies, I have outlined the current BAI activities which we believe are especially relevant to these new regulatory areas. I am not going to go in to these in detail but we would be happy to answer questions on them. The first area is the regulation of harmful content. The second is the preparatory work undertaken by the BAI to support the transformation of the audiovisual media services directive, or the AVMSD, as people know it. I have highlighted our work in the important areas of media literacy and also disinformation. Members will be familiar with the term "fake news", as it is sometimes referred to. We have done significant work on disinformation. We have also been involved in the future funding and sectoral sustainability of public service, commercial and community broadcasters, and the independent productions sector. We have engaged extensively with the Future of Media Commission, which is operating in parallel with this process. We would be happy to take any questions that members may have on those aspects of our work.

The final part of the opening statement specifically addresses certain heads of the Bill. I emphasise that the BAI welcomes and strongly supports the aims of the general scheme of the Bill. It provides for the future regulation of traditional media and also online services. We would commend our colleagues in the Department on the work they have put in to this over the past couple of years. We especially value the establishment of a single content regulator. That should ensure consistency in the approach to regulation. We also welcome the emphasis on regulatory principles and policies which will serve and protect audiences and online users and which will also uphold and promote freedom of expression, cultural diversity and human dignity. The high-level macro approach to regulation in managing the issue of scale is also welcomed.

Our submission refers to a small number of heads which we believe would benefit from further committee consideration. We would be happy to take any questions that members have on these. They include, in no particular order other than that in which we presented them in the document: the independence and resources and resources that will be available to the media commission; some of the categories and indeed definitions of harmful online content; the concept of compliance and warning notices, which we would be familiar with from our work; the proposed content levy and associated schemes that may emerge from that; and some elements of advertising limits.

We would be happy to elaborate on these positions regarding the heads, or any other matter that members may wish to question us on, during the question-and-answer session.

I thank the committee for the opportunity to discuss the general scheme and I look forward to answering whatever questions they may have about our submission.