Mr. Rory Coveney:

Licence fee options are not decisions for us to make. We gave detailed submissions to the Future of Media Commission process and subsequently gave even more detailed submissions to the Department's technical group, which is currently looking at this issue. RTÉ's position has been pretty clear and has been published. We believe some sort of household-based charge that is decoupled from a television is required to capture accurately the viewing that is going on. The specifics around that and how it is collected and by whom are matters for Government. We cannot fix that. The reality is that evasion in Ireland has always been relatively high by European standards. The dynamic that is now especially difficult is the growth of non-TV homes. This is people consuming television over the Internet, in some cases on large-screen televisions at home, which can be our services and others', and they are not obliged to pay the television licence as it is currently constructed. Unless that loophole is closed, to a degree, a large amount of public service viewing and public service content consumption is falling outside the net. The UK closed that gap, the iPlayer loophole, some time ago when it made it part of the liability for the collection of the television licence. There are a variety of ways of doing it with varying degrees of complexity and burdens, either on the collection agent or the State. Unless that core question is addressed, the problem will get worse. Non-TV homes have risen from approximately 3% seven to eight years ago to 16.5% today, so it is growing at a clip of around 2 million per year in terms of the impact to us. It is not sustainable to deliver.

As regards the musical, we made a detailed submission to the Committee of Public Accounts that I am happy to share with the committee outlining the context of the decision, who was involved in it and the background to it. I know that, on 28 September 2022, this committee had a discussion on musicals and investment in that sector and the need to support Irish musicals, Irish talent and Irish creativity. That is precisely what RTÉ did in this case and we are now looking at the long-term future of the musical and how we might bring it back.

We did not sell as many tickets as we wished to sustain it this year but the plan is to bring the show back. The reaction we got from audiences, particularly children, who attended was fantastic. Engaging children in any content these days is difficult. We did not price or position it against pantomimes. It was largely positioned against the big international shows that come to Dublin, which are based initially on Broadway or in London.