Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In his opening contribution, Mr. Godfrey outlined that it is his ambition to ensure the development of powerful content for Irish audiences. I am a former Minister of State with responsibility for our wonderful diaspora throughout the world. That community has been consistently neglected for a very long time. We are in a world where we now have instantaneous communications. For example, my son living in Philadelphia regularly tunes in to watch hurling matches in east Galway and does so with great success because of a platform that has been developed. We are only scratching the surface of what is possible for the global Irish community, building through the medium of broadcasting. Mr. Ó Domhnaill and the team at TG4 have done some really interesting work in this area. I know from talking to Irish communities worldwide that they see TG4 as being to the forefront of that community-building endeavour. Has Mr. Godfrey had any thoughts about how we might nurture and support the 70 million people worldwide who claim Irish identity? It is a powerful cohort of people. We need to be cognisant that they are crying out for content which they can trust and which will engage them and make them confident in expressing their sense of what it means to be Irish in the 21st century.