Mr. Jonathan Ruane:

I joined the board in April last year so I have been on it for approximately 18 months. About half of that time was under the former director general and the former chair. That is not much experience with the former regime. However, I will say that it seemed there were a lot of pressures on the organisation at leadership level. Those pressures have not changed. If anything, they have probably got worse. The old way of looking at things was really about trying to control information and to resolve these pressures and frictions internally. The big sea change I see and what is different under the new regime is that, while those same pressures are there and have probably got worse, a world view is now starting to emerge and to be pushed that these things should be resolved by engaging and being open about them. We have nothing to hide so let us talk about all of these problems instead of saying "Leave it to us; we will figure it out in a room and come back when it is resolved." It is just two different world views. The pressures are still fundamentally there, however.

Senator Sherlock asked about the financial situation. It is precarious for sure. Absolutely. If our organisation was a normal company, the balance sheet we have might shore us up but it is not a normal company. We do not have liquid assets so, while the balance sheet might look good, in effect, it is not much use to us right now, today. To look at our income statement, it is the situation that many of our costs cannot be controlled very easily. I would also reiterate some of the points Mr. Harvey made. We talk a lot about internal matters, such as the culture and so on, which is correct and right but I am concerned that we might not resolve this funding issue. It is really about output. We have already talked about how digital services are going to be curtailed. There are not many people in Ireland who would look at the RTÉ Player and not say that it needs more resources. That is one of the main reasons I joined the board. I started the digital committee so that we could look at problems like this. The reality is that, if we are now more constrained on resources, we have to think about the competitive environment in which we are operating. RTÉ has a dozen people, give or take, who you might call software engineers. Netflix has 2,500. The reality of our ability to change the culture has to be mapped onto our ability to compete in the market and to deliver services for people. If we do not resolve these funding issues and the cultural issues, which are absolutely obvious, there is competition out there looking for the same eyeballs.