Ms Dee Forbes:

As the Deputy rightly pointed out, we did not meet our commitment in 2020 because of Covid. We have made that up throughout 2021. It is worth saying that the independent sector is hugely important to RTÉ. We are partners in so many areas. I have to commend the sector on its resilience throughout the pandemic in doing everything it could to stay up and running and to put protocols in place that allowed the majority of productions to happen but, of course, some fell by the wayside. That was just the nature of the beast we were dealing with.

I have said that we want to spend more with the independent sector. It is something we would love to see and I know it would love to see. Again, this is something that could be rectified if reform of the licence fee happened. As the Deputy knows, there is money already through the BAI sound and vision fund but, likewise, if more money was to come into RTÉ, we would want to spend that in the independent sector. It is hugely important to us. We have made up our commitment; the Deputy is correct that there is a two-year period where we can make it up. We were very keen to make it up as quickly as possible, given the health of the sector. We have done that and, again, we have a very big programme of work under way for this year, which right now has stops and starts, given where we are with Covid. We want to do everything we can to both meet and over-deliver on that commitment, if at all possible.