Mr. Aidan Butler:

It is quite true. You are trying to balance. I remember trying to do it. We did a series with Paschal Mooney and a concert series with Irish country music and all sorts of things. You are always as a national organisation trying to cater for everybody. I spent ten years trying to do it, if not more, sometimes pulling my hair out. At the same time, you are trying to give new artists a platform.

We were talking about what is being done and a great example is iRadio. We got a lovely email from that station saying that four to six new Irish tracks are added to its playlists, which is rotated the same way as its top 20. These tracks are highlighted by presenters telling the audience about the acts and building them up. They then interview two or three acts per week on their breakfast shows. On Sunday evening, the station has a dedicated iLove Irish show, which is a great idea. Now it is expanding that into gigs and bringing these artists to them.

That sort of thing is what I love. We did bits and pieces in RTÉ. 2FM is very good at doing it as well. It is there. It is all bubbling around. It is about getting the encouragement, maybe financial, from Culture Ireland or whatever. When RAAP came in, we did a bursary that ran for three years. I had four categories: pop, classical, jazz and traditional. People sent in tapes and I had four committees picking the best from each one.

We held finals and each artist was then awarded a bursary of up to €5,000 to help them to record. That is the sort of thing-----