Mr. Rory Coveney:

I thank the Senator for his questions. It is worth reflecting on what the public think of all this in terms of news and particularly Covid. It has been useful that the Department of Health has tracked public opinion every two weeks on all sorts of issues regarding the pandemic. That last three slides of that deck, which was done by BNA on behalf of the Department of Health touches on what media sources we rely on for our information regarding Covid and the Government response to it. It is no coincidence the four most significant sources of news are all Irish owned and Irish entities. RTÉ is at 85% in terms of the source of news people got, Virgin Media Television is at 40%, The Irish Timesis at 25% and the Irish Independentis at 22%. It is instructive when we are discussing converging the regulation around different platforms to note the percentages of some of the media platforms as a source of news for people during the pandemic. Twitter is at 10%, Instagram is at 2% and Facebook is at 12%. The public have made their choices based on trusted sources of news which they know and understand to be regulated on one level and also to have proven themselves over many years to be at least trying to tell the truth. I will be the first to admit we do not always get it right. A core part of our job as broadcasters is that we are obligated to be truthful, accurate, impartial and fair . By and large, it shows what the public are doing as a result of that. It also shows how important this job is.