Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 18 April 2013

Public Accounts Committee

2011 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 30 - Communications, Energy and Natural Resources
Chapter 20: Broadcasting Fund
Broadcasting Fund Financial Statements 2011
Broadcasting Authority of Ireland Financial Statements 2011

1:00 pm

Mr. Ciarán Kissane:

That is one where, going back to the starting point in terms of whether projects are ready to go into production, we will only now fund a fully-developed project which is ready to proceed on that basis. That has helped us in terms of the slippage around delivery because one has projects that are much clearer in terms of how they are going to proceed.

On the other piece, we put in place a clearer structure whereby people can communicate with us through the new online system in terms of making us aware that things may slip. Things will slip because of the nature of production. For example, if there is rain, filming gets pushed back. I suppose the key point was if we have greater visibility of it and we are better able to manage it, and also ensuring that we are only funding projects that are ready to go into production, it is less likely to happen at the level that it was happening previously.