Mr. Richard Collins:

I will try to explain the trends that have happened with advertising. Commercial advertising was in decline for a number of years up until Covid. When the pandemic hit in March 2020, we saw a severe decline in advertising revenues. We were down approximately 30% at that stage. Those figures stayed down until about July. As the economy started to open up, they started to recover. By November, because there was a lot of pent-up demand in the economy, advertising revenues came back. We still ended up €11 million below where we were in 2019 but there was a recovery at the end of the year.

In 2021, the country was in lockdown for the first four months so advertising revenues were sluggish but we saw the same trend that we had seen in 2020. Once the economy opened up again advertising took off. We had Euro2020 in June and July, which gave us a big boost. As we came into October and November, again, because there was huge pent-up demand, we had a very strong November. The figures were among the highest we have had in November since 2008, November being the best month of the year for commercial advertising. We ended the year in a good position. The question now is how much of that will continue; was it pent-up demand; has there been a change in attitude towards television advertising; and have advertisers realised there is still value in television advertising, whereas they had doubted that before the pandemic?

Advertisers have realised there is still value in TV advertising whereas they had doubted that before the pandemic. We have plans. This year, we have ambitious targets. We have more sporting rights and there will be advertising revenues coming off them. Digital revenues in the past have been sluggish. In 2021, we made good progress there. In 2022, we have ambitious budgets in that area as well. We will see them growing and contributing.