Mr. Alan Esslemont:

Labhróidh mé as Béarla ach, ar dtús, gabhaim buíochas leis an gcléireach agus leis an bhfoireann chléireachais as a bheith ag comhoibriú liom trí Ghaeilge agus mé ag réiteach don lá seo.

Over the past decade the media landscape has changed beyond recognition. There has been fast growth in subscriptions for streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime and competition for audiences is intensifying as they spend billions of dollars on new content. Households with smart televisions are on the increase and this has had a significant impact on the audience for live television viewing. This makes it even more critical for TG4 to have first-class funding scale to maintain competitiveness and create impact with audiences. We must also maximise the relevance and discoverability of TG4's content.

Members have a crucial role to play in ensuring that citizens are properly represented and served by the media in Ireland and in Ireland's languages. Members ensure the conditions for plurality of voices, diversity of content and, crucially, the findability of that content.

A head must be included in this legislation to provide for prominence of public service content across all platforms and all content distribution mechanisms established in the State and outside the State. The prominence of Ireland's public service media must be safeguarded in law. There are critical linguistic reasons this is important. While Irish is a national language, it functions as a minority language. The habitual Irish-speaking community continually face the danger of what is known as language shift and language diminution. Irish language media has little market power and, unlike Ireland's English language media, exerts little influence on commercial content platforms. An example is TG4's attempt to get its app onto Sky's platform. This has seen years of foot-dragging by Sky. Unless Irish language media is vigorously supported and given legal and regulatory prominence, it will lose relevance, especially for young Irish audiences who are growing up in a global media environment. The media commission envisaged in the legislation needs muscular powers to enforce public service content prominence and to apply an ethos which values the role of the Irish language in broadcasting.

TG4 has stated to the Future of Media Commission that contestable funds have a role to play in ensuring plurality and diversity in Irish media. We welcome the provision for a fund in head 77. Head 77 should specify that a minimum of 25% of the funding shall be allocated to programming in the Irish language or bilingual, as happens with the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, BAI, sound and vision fund. Any decrease in that percentage would mark yet another diminution of the status of Irish language media in the public broadcasting ecosystem. I look forward to discussing these matters further with the committee.