Mr. Rory Coveney:

The difficulty is that one of two things needs to happen. Either our remit needs to be reduced or the funding needs to be raised to meet the remit that exists. The Future of Media Commission report and successive Governments have been clear that there is no appetite to reduce our remit or to take significant swathes of our responsibilities off us and thereby make us smaller. Nor is there any public appetite for that among the public. The public is routinely consulted on this. We do it all the time. The Future of Media Commission report did its own assessment and the BAI does it routinely. There is no appetite for us to be asked to do significantly less. In fact, it is quite the reverse most of the time. There is a mismatch, frankly. I do not have the answer as to how this is resolved. This is a matter of public policy and it is within the gift of the Government to set up a collection mechanism that sustains what we are obliged to do.