Mr. John Purcell:

It is an area we are happy to explore. Syndication of programming can sometimes be challenging because of the hyper-local nature of our services. You can have heated arguments over somebody from Kerry accepting a programme from Donegal and so on, as Béarla let alone as Gaeilge. We would be willing to look at it. During Covid, RTÉ kindly allowed independent stations to access its archive of programming if we were under programming pressure. It is an area that could be explored. I welcome Deputy Connolly's remarks about the need for debate. There is a need for debate in order to have positive development. That speaks to my point about the need for a frank debate about the resources and challenges of radio and the willingness of people to go to great lengths in return for licences, etc. We need to discuss whether they can reasonably be expected to go to such lengths. This is an area that needs debate. We recognise that the levels may be low when they are put in the overall context, but we come from a position of goodwill and we are trying to constructively address that. There are many challenges that we need to contend with in this regard, just as Irish society has spent a lot of time talking about it on a societal level but has not been able to crack this particular nut over many years.