Ms Dee Forbes:

The Deputy is right in that the sports arena is very competitive. We are fighting constantly with rights' increases. In recent months we have come together with other broadcasters to ensure we can keep as much content free to air as possible. The notion of public service broadcasting is to provide the best Irish content to the audience. To do that for the United Rugby Championship, URC, we came together with TG4. We share the matches and on top of that there is the URC TV player. Also, we announced just last week that to ensure the Six Nations remained free to air, we and Virgin Media have come together to ensure that happens. That was extremely important for ourselves and Virgin Media but, most important, for the Irish people. That is a model to try to keep the sports free to air.