Mr. Steve Carson:

Mr. Morrison and I can talk the committee through how the report was carried out, the key conclusions and recommendations we found and address the Chairman's question about how this could come to pass. The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland noted it was a thorough review. It was based on interviews with all the members of "The Frontline" team, the former editor of current affairs, the previous head of "The Frontline" and approximately 20 members of the studio audience. We talked to executives from other broadcasters. We reviewed extensive programme files, people's notebooks, e-mail exchanges and we looked at records of texts that had been sent to that programme and other programmes. We interviewed some members of the team twice to cross-reference information we had gathered and to probe areas of concern that had been thrown up by the research. We looked not only at the questions that had been broadcast but at other questions that had been prepared and not broadcast. We even looked at social media activity after the broadcast and that was a mark of the thoroughness with which we wanted to approach this.

The terms of reference were straightforward: to look at the processes, how the questions were devised, how the audience members were selected and to what extent this was different from the standard for "The Frontline" or to what extent this compared with similar programmes. We did not look at the issue of the tweet on the basis that this had been ruled on by the BAI and was the subject of a separate personnel disciplinary investigation at the time. Mr. Morrison will talk though our basic findings.