Ms Bríd Dooley:

I thank the Cathaoirleach for the opportunity to address the committee today.

As has already been said, the RTÉ archives are a vital resource for understanding the Ireland's cultural, political and social history. Beyond major national events, RTÉ has carefully documented Ireland's folklore, language and traditions and has preserved these accounts of our heritage and identity. The archive acts as a safeguard for Ireland's collective memory, connecting people globally to our past. Ensuring accessibility for current use and for future generations has been a key priority. The digitisation of the archive, as a means to achieve that, has been a complex, ambitious and ongoing project. Last year, RTÉ archives won an international award for excellence in media preservation. We are currently undertaking the largest mass digitisation of audio recordings in RTÉ's history, covering 80 years of content. This involves digitising over 200,000 tapes and discs which will amount to 270 terabytes of data when completed. The goal is to make this content fully available to the public, aligning with the spirit of the draft legislation if not all of its detail.

We already reach the public through our dedicated RTÉ Archives website, through social media, a wide range of programming and in collaboration with many cultural and institutional partners. Since 2015, our bespoke RTÉ Archives website has been a major success, with over 6.5 million views in 2023 alone, including the diaspora. New archive material is published daily with over 2,000 stories added each year. The site also features special exhibitions and searchable collections from television news and radio archives, projects which are supported by the archive funding scheme run by Coimisiún na Meán.

A significant part of our daily work involves providing support to the creative media and independent sector as well as to all of RTÉ's content services. Archives, on average, make up one third of RTÉ's daily news output. Sports services are similarly served, providing a wealth of content for audiences. Archives provide a wide range of content for programming across all platforms including cinematic releases such as the recent documentary film on President Robinson.

We actively seek out partnerships to enhance public access. A collaboration with the National Library, the "Ireland on the Box, TV 60" exhibition attracted over 20,000 visitors. Other collaborative partners include the Museum of Literature Ireland, the National Archives, many decade of centenaries events, the Royal Irish Academy and the Irish Traditional Music Archive. Currently, there is a major Irish language project under way with DCU. This is due to launch next year. Archives also regularly feature in many public events from the ploughing championships to the historic Cork Film Festival.

RTÉ's statement of strategy outlines ambitious plans for the development of all these activities in the coming years.

We aim to complete audio digitisation by 2025 and video digitisation by 2027, with further investment in film collections planned. Investment in a new content management system will greatly enhance access by improving discoverability and availability of content to a wider audience, with the ambition of expanding public search capabilities as our ultimate goal. I thank members of the committee for this opportunity. I look forward to further questions.