Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 25 September 2025

Public Accounts Committee

Financial Statements 2024: Houses of the Oireachtas Commission

2:00 am

Mr. Donnacha McKeon:

It is 30%, which could be low. I have spoken to other broadcast managers from other parliaments, and they could be up around 35% or 40%. However, what I will say about the tender is that it is a bespoke solution that we have here. The model of parliamentary broadcasting we have is different from nearly every other parliament. We own our own channel end to end. Apart from the French Sénat, I think we are the only other parliament in western Europe that owns a TV broadcast channel end to end. Loads of people stream and loads of people go via YouTube; we have our own channel. In America and Canada, they have CPAC, which provides the same thing as Oireachtas TV does but to a greater extent. However, that is actually owned by the cable companies that carry the signal. It is not owned by the parliament. We have a really bespoke model. When we go out for tender, we really are aware of that. We try to get a diversity of responses, but there is a lot of specialised stuff there and maybe companies do not have everything we need within their own resources.

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