Ms Dee Forbes:

I thank the Deputy for his comments. In serving the people of Ireland, we always want to showcase our national teams and our national athletes in the best way possible, where possible. We are delighted with the two collaborations the Deputy mentioned, the URC and the Six Nations Championship, for a number of reasons. They mean that, number one, we can bring those very important sporting events back to RTÉ and, more important, they allow us to keep the entire tournaments free-to-air. That is a real objective of ours in the current marketplace, where sports rights have become so competitive. We are very pleased to be able to do that. Collaboration in this area is exactly something that we are pursuing. It will not apply to everything because it simply cannot. I have said a number of times that it is a combination of simply not being able to afford to do these things on our own any more, as a practical reality, so our collaborations in that respect have worked for both parties, where we can share that cost.

We are also very committed to the diversification of sports on RTÉ. We are very proud of the inroads we have made, especially around women's sport in the past couple of years where, again, we should be and are showcasing that. Certainly, collaborations are something that we will actively pursue. They will not always work, for various reasons, but we are very happy and proud that these two have come to the table and are showcasing the grassroots, it could be said, in the URC and the national and international game in the Six Nations Championship.