Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I also thank the witnesses for the presentation. Like Deputy O'Sullivan, I think RTÉ's coverage has improved significantly. I was intrigued by one of the last comments in the presentation which states, "climate change presents a challenge to journalism, where the immediate can crowd out the important". I think that really goes back to the point raised by the Chairman at the start. Any of these phone-in shows will tend to follow the immediate and not the important. I wonder how they factor that in as they approach fair coverage of these issues, which are so tricky as they say.

I will ask all of the questions at the beginning otherwise the Chair will cut me off if I do not. Last week there was a very interesting report from the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI. It showed that while our production sector emissions are 61 million tonnes, which Paris measures, we have 75% more emissions if you look at our consumption patterns. We are buying lots of things with appalling carbon footprints. Is that factored into their coverage, or is their focus exclusively on the Paris context?

That brings me to one of my pet subjects which is the circular economy. Has RTÉ any sort of plan to develop some programming around that? I think it is a much more palatable approach to some of these very difficult decisions we have to reach. It embraces all forms of environmental damage and not just climate. It looks at the whole supply chain, and not just the producers. It also emphasises collaborative efforts to fix some of these problems. Finally, how do they find social media interacting with their climate coverage? What is their relationship with social media in this sort of arena?