Malcolm Byrne (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This is becoming a quite interesting conversation. One of the things I would like to praise all of the witnesses, from Sky, TG4, Virgin Media and RTÉ, is their role in news and current affairs programming in covering the pandemic and providing factual information. It does stress the importance of quality trusted news. How we want to address it is going to be one of the biggest challenges for media generally. I was conscious of Mr. McCarthy’s comments earlier on the Future of Media Commission. I am disappointed the commission has chosen not to make a submission to the committee or to appear as a witness before it. It would still be appropriate that it would do it before we make the decision.

I am interested to hear from the witnesses, first, how we can ensure we get the quality of news content we expect. That is on the regulatory side regarding news and current affairs, but also what we need to do as a State - it is not just the commission, obviously - to address issues around media and digital literacy and what approach can be taken.