Shane Cassells (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

NewsBrands Ireland, Local Ireland will be in here with all of their editors and publishers tomorrow. They have particular calls to ensure that we have newspapers continuing into the future. There is a problem here. The model is broken by virtue of the fact that young people, in particular, but also people my own age are not buying news in the traditional fashion that they used to. I had the amazing experience of going into a local shop here in the city centre and asking for a newspaper only to be told they do not stock them any more. It is frightening. We have seen newsrooms be absolutely decimated by cuts. We saw the Irish edition of The Sunday Timesrelease a huge number of journalists just before the summer. A number of them were exceptionally good journalists who worked in here and covered political events. I welcome the court reporting scheme and the local democracy scheme. I commend the Minister and the commission on seeking to implement them. This will be very significant.

However, I will go back to the commercial viability of newspapers. We can provide all the reporters we want but if there is no publication, they will not be reporting for anybody. One of the requests is to cut VAT on print and digital newspapers to 0%. We will have to have a serious conversation with publishers and newspapers about their commercial viability. We will be putting good money after bad if things are in trouble. I wish to hear the Minister's opinion on the propositions that are coming forward from newspapers and the seeking of the reduction to 0% VAT in the budget.