Mr. Kevin Bakhurst:

I might bring the chair in on this. She also comes from a financial background, which is helpful. It is publicly acknowledged but it is important to say that there are two elements to our funding request. The first one is interim funding which was always envisaged as part of the agreement after the recommendations of the future media report were not implemented. Then it was a question of how much interim funding each year. Part of the discussion is about what interim funding we need for 2024 when there is a series of significant and expensive special events, including European and local elections, and a number of big sporting events as well.

That has informed what we have put in to the Department and those are the discussions we have been having with NewERA. It also takes into account the impact of inflation on our costs and so on. As the Senator can appreciate, inflation has impacted on our costs on fuel and production and so on. We are going through those rigorously with NewERA and there has been good engagement on that. It is asking tough questions, and rightly so, and we are trying to answer them.

There is the interim funding request, which is that we applied for €34.5 million, and separately to that there is the extra fall in TV licence revenue, which, as we know, is projected to be around €20 million or €21 million by the end of the year, depending on the level. That is hard to predict but on the current level that is approximately what it would be. We have put in that funding request because it gives us significant time to address other costs and to have further discussions and see where the licence fee is and where discussions are on future funding. That is what we have done to try to give us the time to make proper decisions next year about what we need to prioritise and where we can cut costs further in the next 12 months, if it is necessary to do so.