Ms Celene Craig:

Very good. They will certainly have quite a bit to add, I expect, on advertising and climate change.

To address the Chair's first point on climate literacy, this is something that is very front-of-mind for the BAI. Our own awareness has been quite strong through the activities of Media Literacy Ireland and my colleague, Ms Comey, might come in on that with more detail. It became a very key focus for us during the design of the recent focused round of the Sound and Vision fund which had as one of its key objectives the furthering of climate literacy. In rolling out that special round it was our intention to get the engagement of broadcasters and look at the specific issues affecting their areas, that is, their regional or local areas and some of the specific issues particular to those regions. We encouraged engagement, for example, with local authorities to help understand what the specific challenges were with climate in their own regions. This might include recognising a coastal region may be quite different from a more rural or farming one and trying to drill into that to a much greater extent. While we have been open to programming content linked to sustainability and have funded it for many years now, it was the first time we had a focused round in this regard that was supported not just by our own parent Department but by the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications as well. We got quite a considerable amount of input from it in developing the objectives of the scheme. While we are not in a position to make any announcement just yet about the outcomes of that, we were really pleased with the response. When that announcement is made members will see there are some high-quality projects we hope will further develop the theme. Another component of that was to seek to include a learning and development component for both station staff and those contributing to programmes. That was a key objective in this regard.

On the advertising code, we posed the question around whether advertising should be specifically addressed. That has come from our own general experience and certainly strong anecdotal evidence as well that some of the claims that may be made around the sale of vehicles, and cars in particular, need a little more teasing out with respect to some of the detail and the requirement to be clear about what is actually being delivered in terms of climate change.

We would see this as quite a topical issue that is very likely to be addressed in any revised codes that coimisiún na meán would be likely to make.