Ms Celene Craig:

We do not measure but we track. RTÉ measures its public trust itself. It is one of the commitments it gives with respect of its performance. It measures public trust and has its own means for doing so and that is something we track in our review of performance of the public service broadcaster. It is a very important and central metric when it comes to public service broadcasting so that is something we track. As I said, the reference in the Reuters report, while there had been some drop in the most recent report published in June of this year, it bears saying that the levels of trust in public service broadcasting in Ireland are very high compared with standards across Europe more generally. At the end of this year, when we are looking at the performance of public service broadcasting, and obviously this does not just extend to RTÉ, TG4 is subject to the same performance review, it will be very important to measure exactly what that impact has been. Regarding the broadcaster's commitment going forward, it will be very important to see very firm and concrete commitments to ways in which the broadcaster plans to restore the trust that was affected arising from all of the recent events. Ultimately, that comes back to culture and being a public service organisation that manages public funding in an accountable and very transparent way. That culture has to filter down through all of the organisation. Both the board of RTÉ and the new director general have been quite strong in saying they are determined to change that culture so it will be important to see, in their annual statement of performance commitments for next year, just what are the concrete ways in which they plan to change the culture and restore public trust.