Dr. Mark Carpenter:

I thank the Chairman and I first need to reiterate the point I made earlier that anything with levies is reasonably complex and the media commission is going to require to do a great deal of thinking on this. The reason I made the point on investment is twofold. First, if one has a levy scheme that is only a levy, clearly that creates additional administrative expense that is not there with investment obligations. With investment as well, one is effectively creating a floor as opposed to a ceiling. For example, let us look at a scenario where Sky is asked to pay “X” or to invest “X”. If it has to pay “X”, that is what it has to pay but if it has to invest “X” and it identifies the right project or projects that may cost a little bit or somewhat more than “X”, it will still invest in those projects because ultimately that is what is going to get the best return. There are ways to do that while retaining and not going against the point about Irish intellectual property, IP, that both Mr. Coveney and Mr. Esslemont have made. There are various mechanisms that can be put in place in order to retain Irish IP within any such scenario.