Malcolm Byrne (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Yes, although I may be anticipating what RTÉ will say. I am quite supportive of the principle behind this legislation. I agree that we should look at making the archive available. I am quite conscious that much of the time we are talking about the television side of things, but a large part of the radio archive has been made available. One of the things I particularly enjoy is the "Doc on One" archive, which I use when I am out running. It is freely available for people to access.

While I am quite supportive of the principle behind this, I would pose a question to Deputy Costello. He will be aware that the State makes a considerable multi-annual financial contribution to RTÉ, which is something that this committee supports. Should one of the conditions of that contribution be a requirement to meet the obligations set out in the Bill? That may be a question for his Green Party colleague, but it is certainly something to consider in the context of how this is going to be funded. Obviously, there is a need to fund the maintenance of the archive and ensure that all of the intellectual property rights are protected.

I quite favour the idea of the development of a sovereign large language model. While I realise we are moving into a slightly different space, this is important. Norway has developed a sovereign large language model. I appreciate that this is easier in the context of the Norwegian language. Trusted news sources are being used such that when somebody asks about the history of Norwegian broadcasting or for a speech on Norwegian broadcasting, for example, they download the information from trusted sources. They use the Norwegian state broadcaster and so on. Following on from what Deputy Costello stated, I would like the RTÉ archive to be able to feed into that in order that it can be used for educational purposes and as an AI tool. I do not know whether that has been considered. I realise that I am opening up the debate a little.