Malcolm Byrne (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I echo the Chair's praise of some of the social media, and specifically mention TG4's Twitter account. I think it is meán sóisialta is fearr i bhfad for communicating some of the messages. The fact that everyone in here notices it is testament to the success of the account. When the Chair praised the small studio in west Cork, and he was beginning to sound like he was auditioning for a part, I was conscious that the largest film and television content-creation studio is about to be built in north Wexford. It will attract both domestic and international production. I am sure that Mr. Farrell can speak on the quality of life in north Wexford too. It is an ideal location to come to and film.

Much of the discussion we have had involves the broader question of public sector broadcasting and communications and media in our democracy and about the democratic values and their importance. Even though we are critical at times, we are very lucky that we have, for the most part, a free, fair and balanced media in this country. It is the media's role to hold us to account and equally it is our job to question and hold it to account, particularly those in receipt of public funding. We need to broaden that debate. It is about more than just the licence fee in RTÉ. It is around our democracy and those underpinning values, particularly in the new digital world because this is Hamlet without the prince. The digital players are not here at this discussion. We had a similar discussion when we were talking with print media and local and community radio prior to Christmas. We need to broaden that discussion. I put the challenge to broadcasters and those on the editorial side - and we are not trying to tell them editorially what to do - but that broader debate needs to happen.

I agree on the point about collaborating on distribution opportunities, certainly with regard to prominence. Those are crucial questions. This comes to the role of the regulator, which people may want to comment on, which I am confident will be the most powerful regulator in the State given the extent of responsibilities that are there. Ms Craig and Ms Comey may want to answer this. One is a very specific question around funding and the content levy we were talking about applying on streamers. We had talked about the streamers coming in. Even in the recommendations that were made today, I am aware that one of the new commissioner's first tasks will be to look specifically at how a content levy might operate. We need to get that in place as quickly as possible. It may be possible to provide an update on that from the commission's perspective. The other element which the committee was concerned about was that the commission is sufficiently resourced and staffed to be able to oversee, regulate and manage everything that is going on in the sector. This is not the BAI merging into coimisiún na meán. In terms of staff numbers, it will be ten times and more the size of what was there before with a lot of specialisations. Will the commission be able to open out all the issues? Are our guests confident that now it is effectively up and running, it will be able to get the staff at a sufficient levels, that we have confidence that it is acting as the regulator to address this? Are there any problems foreseen on the HR side? Ms Craig and Ms Comey may want to come in on those specific matters but we do need to talk about the broader democracy question.