Ms Susan McKay:

I will take the first part of the Senator's question, which was about awareness of the Press Council of Ireland and Office of the Press Ombudsman. All of our member publications carry a small notice - I would argue that it may be a bit too small - stating that the publication is a member of the Press Council of Ireland. People will be aware of the council through that. If they are interested, they can then look up the website and find out more. I would like to do much more publication education work to make sure people know we are there, first, and also that they know how to use the process.

Looking at our complaints statistics, we see that a lot of people do not make their complaint well. They complain about people who are not members of the council and they do not understand they must first write to the editor of the publication citing what is their complaint, what part of the code of principles they feel has been breached, etc. We want to make sure people know how to use the code intelligently. It is about opening up a proper dialogue between the press and the public, which is really healthy for the former as well as for the latter. Newspapers want to know what the public wants, what people find offensive and what people do not understand. For example, many people do not understand the basis on which court reporting is done. That is not good.

That is my response to the first part of the Senator's question. It is probably more for the industry members to respond to the second part of her question.