Ms Dee Forbes:

I thank the Senator for his questions. He correctly points out that sport in its entirety is something we must represent and that is very much the objective. We were active participants in the 20x20 campaign and throughout that period we proactively increased our representation of women. Last year was incredible for Irish women in sport and at the RTÉ sports awards, seven from the ten of the nominees were women. The winner, Ms Rachel Blackmore, was a woman, which was utterly fantastic.

We showed 36 live women's sports events in 2021, which is a record outside of 2019, when we showed the Womens' World Cup. We have made great progress and continue to do more. This year we have the Women's Six Nations, the Women's Euros and European games that include athletics, swimming and rowing. Our endeavours in the area go on. We have seen record audiences for the Irish women's soccer team, which has been fantastic, and we have more female pundits, presenters and co-commentators. Last year we managed to show every one of the women's international soccer matches, despite huge issues with where they were etc.

We are very committed to increasing our coverage of women's sport and that is again against a backdrop of decreased and challenging funding. Sport is a particularly expensive area.

Certainly, our 20x20 campaign continues and we are very proud of the progress we have made. We want to do more.