John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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The purpose of this part of the meeting is to discuss with representatives of RTE its strategic plan for the years from 2012 to 2017, which has been drawn up by RTE, and to address pay issues and matters arising from "The Saturday Night Show" which aired on 11 January last. On behalf of the joint committee, I welcome Mr. Noel Curran, director general; Mr. Kevin Bakhurst, deputy director general and managing director, RTE news and current affairs; Ms Breda O'Keeffe, chief financial officer; Mr. Brian Dalton, managing director, corporate development; and Mr. Eamonn Kennedy, solicitor, director of legal affairs at RTE.
I draw attention to the fact that by virtue of section 17(2)(l) of the Defamation Act 2009, witnesses are protected by absolute privilege in respect of their evidence to this committee. However, if they are directed by the committee to cease giving evidence in respect of a particular matter and they continue to do so, they are entitled thereafter only to a qualified privilege in respect of their evidence. Witnesses are directed that only evidence connected with the subject matter of these proceedings is to be given and are asked to respect the parliamentary practice to the effect that, where possible, they should not criticise or make charges against any person, persons or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable. I also advise that the opening statements submitted to the joint committee will be published on the committee website after this meeting.
Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the House or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.
I invite Mr. Curran to make his opening statement.

Mr. Noel Curran:

I thank the Chairman and members of the joint committee for inviting us to this meeting. As the Chairman noted, I am joined by a number of colleagues and I hope that, between us, we will be able to answer any questions members may have.

As part of the section 124(8) five year review of public service broadcasting, RTE submitted a detailed five year strategy to the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, BAI, early last year. Last June, having concluded the review process, which included a detailed analysis of RTE's plans by consultants, Crowe Horwath, the BAI recommended to the Minister that the level of public funding to RTE should be increased, with certain conditions. In July, the Government, in its response, affirmed its ongoing support for the concept, purpose and practice of public service broadcasting in Ireland. It also welcomed the BAI review and considered the report and recommendations submitted as comprising an important step in ensuring that public service broadcasting will be sufficiently well funded and these funds will be used in a transparent manner.

The Minister recommended a number of additional initiatives and reviews related to public service broadcasting, specifically RTE. Following this lengthy process, RTE published its five year strategy last September and sent a summary of the document to a range of stakeholders, including every Member of the Oireachtas. The five year strategy is an important document for RTE. It was developed following a review of everything we do and how we do it. It was informed by analysis of the market, our audiences and responsibilities and the impacts of changing technology. The brief was simple - to reshape RTE for the future and make it fit for the times we live in and the diverse audiences we serve.

We developed our plans mindful of the society and economy within which RTE sits and the changed circumstances of our audiences and licence fee payers. In that context, we were clear that the first stage of our strategy must be to return RTE to a sound financial footing by ensuring our operations are run as efficiently as possible. This objective has been achieved. We will soon publish our annual report for 2013 in which we will report a small financial surplus for the first time since 2008. I acknowledge and thank RTE staff and members of the independent production sector who worked closely with us to achieve this turnaround.

As with many organisations, Ireland's economic collapse had a deep impact on RTE's finances. The organisation is dual funded and its commercial revenues, primarily advertising, declined by €95 million between 2008 and 2013. In addition to this 40% reduction in commercial revenues, public funding levels reduced by €19 million in the same period. Combined, this revenue loss amounts to €113 million over the past five years. The most recent national budget for 2014 resulted in a further €5 million reduction in public funding. In response and to return to a financial break-even point, RTE has reduced its operating cost base by 30% since 2008, while maintaining - this is a critical point - all of its public services. The scale of RTE's operating cost reductions to date is unique across the semi-State sector. The organisation also delivered digital terrestrial television, DTT, allowing the State access to an €875 million dividend from the sale of spectrum and enabling the electrical trade to benefit by approximately €150 million in retail sales.

The impact of restructuring on RTE has been very significant. Between 2008 and the end of 2013, almost 500 staff departed. This reduction of 21% in our workforce was more than double that which occurred across the public service and semi-State sector over the same period. In 2009, RTE was the first public body to agree and implement reductions in basic salary for all staff. Pay reductions ranged from 2.35% to 12.5%. No bonuses have been paid since 2009 and average basic pay for RTE staff in December 2013 was €56,300. Between departures and pay cuts, total staff costs have reduced by 25% in RTE since 2008. Between 2008 and 2012, RTE's total staff cost reductions were more than double the average achieved across the public and semi-State sector. An independent review of managers' salaries conducted by Hay shows that salaries for RTE managerial and professional staff are at the mid-point of a representative large industry sample, including semi-State organisations. When short-term incentive payments are included, RTE managerial and professional salaries are below market average, as variable pay for these grades has ceased for the last five years. The survey was completed in November 2013. We have submitted the report in full to the committee along with more detailed financial and staffing information.

RTE's annual report publishes the director general's remuneration package annually. The annual report is prepared in accordance with IFRS accounting standards and makes full disclosure under IFRS. RTE has implemented the Government pay cap for semi-State chief executives and is also adhering to the other recommendations for semi-State remuneration made by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform in 2011. We have achieved substantial reductions in presenters' contracts as they have been renewed over the past number of years. Reductions range from 21% to 68%. The average reduction across the top ten is well in excess of the 30% reduction we committed to achieving. Like the general public, RTE values enormously the work all our on-air talent does. As the committee will no doubt be aware, we lost one of our most experienced presenters to a commercial radio station during contract negotiations last summer. While we have tried to protect services and programming as much as possible, investment in indigenous television programme production at RTE and in the independent production sector - a vitally important part of the Irish creative digital economy - has been reduced by almost €75 million during the period 2008 to 2012.

While it is important for the committee to be aware of the financial context in which RTE developed its five-year plans, there are other important contexts too. The committee will agree that the public space occupied by the media is crucial. Within a highly competitive international media environment, we have made the argument in our five-year strategy that a small country requires a strong national public service broadcaster more than ever. RTE has obligations and responsibilities which commercial companies do not have. It is established as a dual-funded, not-for-profit, statutory body. Its purpose and activities are guaranteed by legislation, it is independently regulated and it is not accountable to wealthy business people, offshore private equity investors or the Government, but rather to the public which funds it. RTE's core public purpose has never been more relevant or important than it is today. RTE retains a unique connection with Irish people. In our own regular tracking analysis, with which I am not sure the committee is familiar, we see the evidence for this continually. In 2013, RTE reached 96% of Irish adults on a weekly basis across the full range of its services. Public trust in RTE is now at 72% while 68% of Irish people believe RTE enriches their lives and 78% say RTE is an Irish brand of which they are proud. Some 71% of people believe that what we do is of high quality. No other media organisation in Ireland comes close to that level of engagement and reach. Despite all of the cutbacks we have had to make, these measures have improved over the past year.

None of this means that RTE does not at times upset certain sections of society or people who hold particular views. It does not mean RTE does not broadcast programmes that some people dislike or that it makes no mistakes. It means that sustaining, reinvigorating and constantly improving RTE is important and matters to most Irish people. It matters particularly now that we find ourselves in a digital world where information is delivered on increasingly diverse platforms by increasingly diverse sources. It matters when original reporting everywhere is declining and the ownership of Irish commercial media has consolidated considerably. It matters when the forces of globalisation within media are diluting national and local culture like never before and when some of the largest multinational media organisations in the world are taking crucial revenue out of the Irish creative and media sector.

In the television market alone in the last 18 months, the number of UK television channels selling Irish advertising has grown by 33% to a total of 36 channels. Sky added Irish advertising to two new channels in January. UK public service broadcaster Channel 4 is now selling Irish advertising. UTV will launch a new Irish television channel here next January. In reality most of these channels treat Ireland as a lucrative profit centre and invest little or nothing in Irish-focused content for Irish audiences. Their combined effect is to suck revenue out of the economy away from investment in Irish-focused programming and into the pockets of some of the most well-resourced global media companies in the world such as BSkyB. In contrast, RTE's contribution to national output in 2013 was of the order of €310 million while sustaining 3,000 full-time equivalent jobs in the Irish creative economy. For every €1 in licence fee income, RTE contributed €1.70 to the Irish economy, including taxes. Of RTE's total operating spending, 86% was among Irish-based personnel and suppliers.

We have argued in our five-year strategy that Ireland, as a small country, needs a media organisation that can compete with international media and guarantee a distinctive Irish voice and perspective on the world. This, after all, was one of the primary reasons RTE was originally established. Now, with satellite and internet technology, the threat is far greater and multifaceted. Our five-year strategy sets out how we plan to meet the challenges of increasing competition and the changing needs of audiences in the digital age. The central theme of RTE's strategy is to move from being a public service broadcaster to a public service media organisation which delivers distinctive, diverse and high-quality programming and content to audiences across devices. One of the key conclusions of the Crowe Horwath report prepared for the BAI was that while RTE receives the least public funding of any of the five comparable dual-funded public service broadcasters studied, its share of the advertising market was far exceeded by other public service broadcasters.

As with all public expenditure today, the public must be assured that it is being used effectively and efficiently. Few, if any, public bodies in Ireland have undergone the level of independent scrutiny and review on its efficiency and performance which RTE has undergone over the past 18 months. A total of three independent external reviews - by Crowe Horwath, Indecon and, most recently, New Era - were commissioned by the BAI or the Department into all that RTE does and how it does it. RTE has also commissioned its own internal reviews and analyses.

Across these reports and reviews, all our operating costs have been benchmarked against the public service, semi-State sector, private sector and other public service and commercial media organisations around the world.
While accepting that organisations can always be more efficient, I genuinely believe a reasonable analysis of all of this material, much of it published, gives a clear sense of what has been achieved by RTE. RTE is now at a crossroads. Without action, the range of factors I have outlined can lead only to a decline in both RTE's relevance, audiences and commercial viability. A diminished RTE serves no public or commercial interest. Those that are likely to gain most from a decline are not other Irish-owned media organisations, but large international media providers. Much is at risk beyond RTE's own future because a viable independent production sector, investigative journalism, significant Irish drama, national regional coverage and international news coverage all add significantly to Irish life. These are not services or activities sustainable on any scale without a strong RTE.
I have said RTE should have responsibilities and obligations in return for public funding, particularly increased public funding if there is to be a new broadcasting charge. We believe that firmly and totally accept it. What we want are circumstances in which we can increase our investment in programmes produced by the independent production sector and within RTE. We want to invest much more in our news operations and news channel by adding more live bulletins, regional news and international news, and by re-opening our London office and having more feature programming. We want to invest more in ground-breaking investigative reporting, science programmes and high-quality Irish drama, and we seek to develop Ireland as a key international hub for such drama production. We want to be a key supporter and developer of increased investment in Irish comedy and to increase our commitment to the Irish arts and sector. We want to use digital technology to develop new ways to showcase the best of Irish talent. Consequent to The Secret Life of the Shannon series last year, we want to make more natural history and wildlife programming showcasing Ireland's extraordinary natural beauty. We need to invest in crucial technology, such as the future development of the free-to-air Saorview platform and other digital infrastructure. These are just some the things we want to do and in respect of which we want to make commitments and be subject to obligations.
The Government indicates that it plans to introduce the public service broadcasting charge in 2015. By decoupling the charge from TV ownership, the new system promises to be fairer, more efficient and reflective of current media usage. As is clear from the documents published in August last year, the change has the potential to yield more public funding for public service broadcasting than the current TV licence system while, importantly, not increasing the burden on very stretched Irish households. We look forward to developments in its implementation over the coming months.
In the meantime, we will continue to invest in Irish stories and to facilitate debate in Ireland. One of the topics that Deputies wish to discuss today is a recent defamation settlement made by RTE. We are happy to answer questions on that. However, may I say on a general level that no individual settlement or decision will weaken RTE's resolve to present a wide range of views on current affairs topics and allow forthright debate. We have strict and restrictive legal responsibilities under Irish defamation law. We operate within these legal boundaries. The Defamation Act 2009 is due to be reviewed this year and we would like to see some changes. However, we also fully understand that for many people, particularly those who have suffered within this society because of their sexual orientation, homophobia and discrimination are very real. We need to remember that one of the positive outcomes of the recent controversy was a substantial increase in the level of debate around homophobia, equality and same-sex marriage, much of it conducted on RTE programmes. That will continue.
I hope members have had a chance to read the letter and the comprehensive guidance note on protection of reputation already submitted to the committee by our director of legal affairs, Mr. Eamonn Kennedy, who has joined us today. We have attached an additional note on opinion that I hope will be useful in the debate on defamation. I thank the committee. We will do our best to answer any questions members have.

John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I thank Mr. Curran for the presentation. We will proceed straight to members’ questions. To be as efficient as possible, I ask spokespersons to confine their remarks to four or five minutes. We will try to get around to everybody. I do not want everybody to be asking the same questions, only to have each one answered ten or 15 times. I want to be fair to everyone.

Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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The Chairman should not worry; there is another show elsewhere that might have the desired effect.

John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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There is.

Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the delegates from RTE. It is a good day for them to be here. I have a couple of questions. I was expecting this session to be benign enough, going through the deficiencies in RTE and its plans for the future. The director general lamented that one of RTE's leading lights left the broadcaster last year but I contend the sky did not fall in. RTE has survived after the individual's departure. I have been saying constantly over recent years that the fees RTE is paying to some presenters are outrageous and without justification. There are plenty of others with the same talent whom RTE is not recruiting. This has been shown quite clearly over the past eight or nine months. It is a matter of which RTE needs to be mindful. It challenges to the core the manner in which it has conducted its business over the past 15 years or more.

I have a few questions based on the presentation. Reference was made to defamation law and likely changes thereto. What changes is RTE hoping for, and what does it envisage? What is RTE's vision for 2FM? What is its future?

A constant criticism concerns the number of RTE staff who attend high-profile events overseas. At such events, there tends to be one presenter for the morning news bulletin and another for the evening bulletin. A constant issue that arises concerns the degree to which RTE is efficient. I note that there were considerable reductions between 2008 and 2013, yet RTE has still continued as the national broadcaster. This demonstrates quite clearly that there were massive inefficiencies. Does RTE believe it is as efficient a national broadcaster as possible?

The presentation referred to the broadcasting charge. If the charge is to result in increased revenue, it should be distributed among the community-based radio stations. Not as much should go to RTE as might have been going to it in the past. These are my main issues.

If RTE is true to what it stated in its presentation, it should represent every sector, both urban and rural. Its challenge is to ensure balanced coverage of what is happening in the regions in addition to the capital rather than just having half-hour programmes on the regions a couple of times per week. It really needs to address this. There is competition in the regions. Statistics on listenership in the regions show that listeners are far more likely to listen to local radio stations during the day than to RTE stations. This presents a challenge. Perhaps the delegates will address these issues.

Mr. Noel Curran:

In terms of the Deputy's opening remarks - I do not think there was a question in them - we are concerned about the genuine public concern over fees paid to some of our presenters. I have said publicly, and I say it again, that it was RTE's fault and not the presenters because people will negotiate the highest fee they can. We became aware of the matter and have taken significant action. We have reduced it by over 30%, as I have outlined, and when the process is complete, it will be closer to 40%. RTE is publicly funded and is in a very privileged and powerful situation within Ireland, so we expect criticism. We will get political criticism and a lot of other criticism. We were responding to what we felt was public concern around the issue when we took the initiatives we did.

In terms of the future of 2FM, we are not happy with how 2FM is performing, and I have made that clear publicly. We have introduced a significant amount of change in that regard. We have pushed that change through but it has been difficult for everyone involved over recent months. We want to see a better performance by 2FM, and both I and senior management in radio have made that clear.

In terms of some of the issues around 2FM, if one looks at other public service broadcasters and if one goes back to legislation, the Amsterdam protocol has accepted the public service broadcaster's need to produce as wide a range of programming as possible, including entertainment and other programming. That has been backed up in the past eight to ten years by two separate resolutions from the Council of Europe. Our own Broadcasting Act says that RTE needs to service all audiences. If one looks at other public service broadcasters, one can see that the BBC, Austria, Belgium, Poland, Portugal and Croatia have a station like 2FM. I can list 15 European countries where the public service broadcaster has a similar station. I understand that the matter is a cause for concern, particularly for the commercial radio sector. As much as 41% of 2FM's audience is under 35 years, it has a weekly reach of 800,000 people and a daily reach of 400,000 people but half of the commercial minutage of commercial rivals. We have plans for 2FM, we are not happy with it, we are introducing change and we expect it to improve its performance.

I ask my colleague, Mr. Bakhurst, to comment on overseas coverage and regional activity.

Mr. Kevin Bakhurst:

I thank the Deputy for his question. We are very aware of the scrutiny, which is quite right, of the money we spend on overseas coverage and the number of people we send abroad. We are also aware of the market in which we operate. We compete with international news organisations on big events. It is important we cover such events, particularly the ones that are, in my view and that of my colleagues in news, relevant and important to the people of Ireland such as the election of the new Pope last year.

With regard to recent events in Ukraine, where my colleagues, Tony Connelly and Paul Cunningham, did a great job for RTE in very dangerous and difficult circumstances, we had two reporters and a one man camera crew there, but we had two people there at any one time. I understand the BBC had 75 people in Ukraine. These are the kinds of numbers we might be competing against. While being careful and prudent, we also need to deploy resources to big events, such as the upcoming visit by President Higgins to the United Kingdom, to service our range of programmes. I take the Deputy's point about presenters working on more than one outlet, particularly across the day in radio and television, and that is what we will be doing. We will do a lot of live broadcasting for the President's visit as well as presenting some of our television bulletins and radio programmes from the UK.

With regard to the regions, the last time I was before the committee, we talked about a new way of cementing our presence in the regions which has moved on quite rapidly since we were last here. The committee will know that RTE has a permanent office in Cork. We have no plans to change that situation and we produce a lot of content out of Cork. We have created partnerships with the institutes of technology in some of the other regions which are going extremely well. Our office in Dundalk has successfully moved to the Dundalk IT and the partnership seems to work very well. We will bring a big broadcasting conference to Dundalk next year. We are in the process of moving our Athlone office to premises at the IT there plus there are other aspects to the partnership. In Waterford, we moved into new premises towards the end of last year. Our partnership with Waterford IT has been very successful so far. The institute has been extremely helpful and it has been a very constructive partnership so far.

I am sure Mr. Kennedy will talk about the changes we would like to see in the defamation law, which is very important. It is very restrictive, in my view, and it has an impact around the edges on public debate. I would say one thing, which is that people may not be aware that, for example, right now, there are four or five political figures here who are either in the process of taking legal action or threatening legal action against RTE in this area. It is an area that we need to look at. If political figures in the public arena are in that space, that is a danger sometimes to robust public debate.

Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)
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How many RTE staff were in Rome for the election of the new Pope last year?

Mr. Kevin Bakhurst:

Off the top of my head I think it was 13 people but that includes satellite engineers and camera crews. I think there were five or six on-air people and a producer.

Mr. Noel Curran:

Deputy Moynihan asked a few other questions. I will ask Mr. Kennedy to go into detail about defamation because we have discussed this. There are issues for me around honest opinion. Some of the language is incredibly complex and incredibly difficult. The concept of it, as introduced in the last amendment, was a positive move. I know the UK has moved towards that in recent legislation but we have not seen precedent on that . That which should be the cornerstone of our defence has some provisions and complications. I also think that some of what the UK has done in terms of setting a level of causing serious harm and stating that a defendant must prove that the libel has caused serious harm is something for us to look at. Many defamation cases never reach court and are never settled because we defend them to the hilt. Perhaps there should be a threshold from the start for some of those cases which use up an awful lot of time and resources.

There are other issues. One can look at what has happened in America. I do not believe that we will ever have the first amendment protection or that we will have the malice protection the US has, but there are issues around that and around opinion. For a jury, and these are juries of our peers who are deciding these issues, cornerstones of defence should be as uncomplicated as possible, although that is not always possible. I will ask Mr. Kennedy to comment on the issue presently.

On the Deputy's two other questions, the first one of which was whether we are as efficient as we can be, it is hard for any organisation to say, across the board, that it is as efficient as it can be in every single thing it does. RTE is substantially more efficient than it has ever been. In terms of all the outside reviews that have come in, and the NewERA review, which will be critical in this regard because that is its brief, we are very confident that we are a very efficient organisation.

In terms of the community radio issue, I have a huge amount of sympathy and support for community radio in terms of the work it does. In terms of local commercial radio, when I go up home, there are two stations, LMFM and Northern Sound. I listen to them, I think they both do a tremendous job, and I do not say so in a remotely patronising way. They do public service broadcasting. I think there are issues outside of community radio. Ultimately, it is for the Minister to make the decision. It is not going to be an RTE decision.

The battle has sometimes been painted as David and Goliath versus RTE but in assessing a decision we need to stand back from some of this area. UTV or Communicorp own 35% of the stations. UTV purchased LMFM for €9 million in 2012 and Galway Bay FM for €20 million and Communicorp bought Today FM and Highland Radio for €200 million so radio stations are valuable. They are less valuable now than they were at the height of the boom but nobody should be under the illusion that if the adverting market returns that radio stations will not be valuable. UTV has just announced a pre-tax profit of €20 million and Communicorp is one of the largest radio owners in the UK.

We also need to stand back and look at how a decision would impact on provincial newspapers. It would impact much more on such newspapers than on us in terms of advertising.

I have tried to have a very good relationship with the Independent Broadcasters of Ireland. I met its chairman, Mr. John Purcell, the other day and said to him that I would like to meet him again in the next number of weeks to see if we have common interests. I appreciate what it does do but let us stand back and examine the facts. All of the licences for commercial radio are exclusive. Even if I owned a provincial newspaper anyone could set up a provincial newspaper and come into the area to set up a free sheet. Commercial radio is different, particularly national commercial radio. I shall not give a definitive statement on the matter but it is a complicated area.

To this day I have never heard the chief executive of UTV or Denis O'Brien say that they want to access public funding for their stations because they know that such funding carries obligations. RTE is reviewed annually by consultants and we must publish talent-presenter fees. Community radio, in particular, is not-for-profit. I am not saying that it does a better job than commercial radio. A lot of local commercial radio does a terrific job.

My final comments may answer some of the questions that may arise later and I ask Mr. Kennedy to comment on some of the defamation issues.

Mr. Eamonn Kennedy:

I shall give some background. The current legislation in Ireland is the Defamation Act 2009 which replaced the 1961 Act. Since the foundation of the State there has only been two pieces of legislation that have amended common law defamation. Section 5 of the current Act provides that the Minister for Justice and Equality must commence a review within five years of the passing of the Act so I presume that a review will be announced during the course of this year.

The 2009 Act brought some useful changes. It moved the process along whereby defamation claims could be settled or brought to a conclusion in a much speedier way; it provided for an offer of an ends procedure which is helpful in that regard; and it also allowed for the lodgement of money without an admission of liability which for publishers was a useful change. There has also been a movement towards diffusing the costs, certainly for defamation claims which are significant. In 2008, Oxford University carried out a study that ranked Ireland second in Europe in terms of the cost of dealing with defamation claims and Ireland was a factor of ten times more expensive than the next country ranked third, which was Italy.

There are issues that most publishers would view as problematic. The recent events around the "Saturday Night Show" focused our minds on the issue of opinion and how that is protected in the legal system. I have forwarded a paper to the committee that outlined a number of concerns about how the defence of honest opinion, that is present in the 2009 Act, works in practice and it is something that we would make a submission for a review.

There are probably a number of other issues that could be usefully addressed by making some changes. Countries like Australia and the UK have carried out reviews in the past number of years and we could draw some useful ideas from them, not least being the creation of a statute written in simpler form. Let me give an example. The last Irish Act introduced a defence of fair and reasonable publication in the matter of public interest. Last night I counted that the provision runs to 60 lines of text but its UK equivalent runs to 20 lines and is written in relatively simple language. I can go through the legislation if the committee wishes.

John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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That is okay. Other issues will probably crop up during the debate. Deputy McEntee is next.

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I thank the delegation for the presentations. RTE provides an excellent and valuable service and none of us want to see its quality or programmes reduced. A lot of the presentations focused on funding and increased funding was sought but that is like asking how long is a piece of string. What kind of funding is sought? It has been said that funding comes with conditions and I want to know what they are. We are talking about public funding and public moneys. What proposal does RTE wish to put to the public? It has been stated in the report that RTE broke even in 2013 and it has been just been stated that there was a surplus. What are the projections for the coming year?

The members of the delegation stated what would be done with more funding. What can the public expect from RTE if more funding is provided? Will it create jobs?

I have read the report and know that RTE prides itself on being open, transparent and efficient. Many of us are well aware of anonymous social media messaging from speaking on local radio stations. The debate during the presidential election campaign was also a key issue last year. What steps have been taken to deal with anonymous messages? People should not be able to submit anonymous text messages and they should state where the message comes from and whether the details are true or false. Something needs to be done and I ask the delegation to elaborate on the matter.

The delegation has said that it hopes to facilitate and open up a bit more to independent producers and educational institutions. My brother is an independent producer who works in an educational institution and I consider the sector to be a closed book at present. Can the delegation expand on how it hopes to help young producers and up-and-coming people get into the industry and work into the future?

I had a question on the debate surrounding Rory O'Neil and the show that took place not too long ago but the delegation has already answered it. How will RTE handle the same-sex marriage debate and prevent something like that situation from happening again?

Mr. Noel Curran:

With regard to funding, we specifically did not insert a figure in the five-year strategy because the matter is unclear. The Minister has made it clear that there will be no individual increase imposed on households. We are not clear about how the new charge will be collected, who will collect it and whether there will be a business charge element. We therefore found it hard to make a calculation. Figures have appeared that range between €18 million and €20 million. When we see the final details for how the scheme will operate, who will collect it and the charges imposed then we will be in a much better position to supply a figure. We decided to hold back rather than put out a figure that is pulled out of anywhere.

We have tried to highlight the areas. We have said to the public that if this measure is introduced and there is additional funding then we will concentrate our investment on things that we provide uniquely. We have outlined some of these. I refer to the news channel, investigative programming and drama which are things that the market finds difficult to produce because of the costs involved. We are also looking at technology and Saorview. It was important for us to say the following to people in terms of entering this debate.

We have known for a couple of years that the debate around the broadcasting charge was on the cards. We took a conscious decision not to go into that debate saying that RTE needed more money because it is broke. RTE needs more money because it cannot survive. We took the actions outlined to show we are as efficient as possible. We are also saying that we face decline because of international competitive pressures. What we are saying to the public is that any additional funding will as much as possible be invested in programming, particularly programming the public cannot get elsewhere.

In regard to the question on the independent sector, we have given a commitment that a minimum of 50% of any additional funding received by RTE will go to the independent sector. This is where the job issue arises. It also arises in terms of the protection of employment in an organisation that has lost 500 people over the last number of years. We are consciously trying to look outwards rather than inwards. We are consciously trying to meet our obligations around employment and the wider economy. This is the reason we committed for the first time to a minimum of 50% of additional funding being spent on the independent sector.

I will ask Mr. Bakhurst to respond to the questions regarding social media.

Mr. Kevin Bakhurst:

Deputy McEntee referred to the presidential debate, about which we spoke on the last occasion we appeared before the committee. A range of safeguards have been put in place to ensure the mistakes made during that programme, in terms of the use of a tweet, do not happen again. As I have stated previously, I am confident they will not. I rest my reputation on saying that they cannot and should not happen again.

Social media in the wider context, particularly the anonymous use of social media, is an issue not only RTE, but for all of us, including politicians. There is not a huge amount that any of us can do about it. Frankly, nor can politicians because Twitter, Facebook and so on are international organisations. Currently people can use those media anonymously to say what they like about people. Much of the debate in this regard-----

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I was referring specifically to text messages to radio stations and so on and how they are vetted in terms of the identification of the person sending the message and whether what is being said about another person is true. We have all heard comments on radio about texts but we do not know from where they are coming.

Mr. Kevin Bakhurst:

If there is to be any weight given to text messages, production teams can call the number from which the text is received to check them out. Much depends on how much weight is put on a text. Some are passing comments. If they are significant interventions then the person who plays a bigger role than the production team would phone the caller to check that he or she is who they purport to be.

Mr. Noel Curran:

In terms of facilitating independent producers, as I have already stated they are a critical part of our output. In terms of new funding, we have committed to a minimum level. Mr. Dalton will respond on the issue of our relationship with the universities.

Mr. Brian Dalton:

The level of contraction within the organisation has been massive, with 500 people leaving. It is difficult when going through that level of contraction to hold public competitions for the recruitment of new talent into the organisation. However, we are very conscious that we have to renew the organisation. This can only be done through creative talent. This means we have to attract younger people into the organisation. We plan to engage with the third level colleges around internships of up to two years. As a public service broadcaster, it is crucial we reflect the lives of everybody and crucial that we tap into that talent. We are keen to progress those plans.

Michael Colreavy (Sligo-North Leitrim, Sinn Fein)
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I welcome the witnesses and thank them for attending today's meeting. I and most people would agree with the vision as outlined by Mr. Curran on behalf of RTE. Visions are beautiful things in that they do not have constraints. However, strategies and plans do. I count myself among the 71% of people who believe that in general RTE does a quality job and that this country and its people would be the worse off without that quality public service broadcasting provided by RTE. I acknowledge that RTE has and continues to try to streamline operations and maximise the return and investment by taxpayers in the organisation.

I would like to raise a couple of specific issues. It is stated on page 5 of the submission that competition is the major obstacle facing public service broadcasting over the next 20 years. It was also stated that this increased competition would be great for Irish audiences and the Irish creative economy if it included new Irish programming content but that it does not. The reality is that it does not and this is sucking revenue out of the country. Is there an implicit expectation in this regard that Government should introduce some form of protectionism or special support measures for Irish produced programming over and above that which is currently produced? I am unsure as to the intent of the statement on page 5 of the submission. I am also unsure of the expectation of the witnesses from the committee and the Government in that regard.

I note that RTE now sees Raidió na Gaeltachta as a core service rather than, as previously implied, a complementary service. I welcome that. However, I would like to know the change of management thinking in this regard. In particular, how will RTE ensure that the necessary staff and resources will be made available to enable Raidió na Gaeltachta to fulfil its remit as a core service? I would welcome if the witnesses could advise the committee on RTE's recently drafted Irish language policy, including how it is to be implemented and if and when a person will be engaged to oversee its implementation.

In regard to the recent controversy around the defamation issue, there are two issues of concern to me. The first is the specific incident itself. I received the documentation in this regard from Mr. Kennedy, for which I thank him. I tried to read it last night. It is not easy reading. It would in my view induce nosebleeds in most people. I accept the point made that as legislators we sometimes ask questions of organisations which we should be asking of ourselves because we are the ones who introduce and enact legislation. However, there is another aspect to this, which relates to a frame of thinking. My concern is in regard to how easily RTE rolled over during the homophobic defamation incident and what chance it would have if, for example, the Government tried to insist on its point of view being put across unfairly to the population. It is not the legislation but the frame of mind in that regard that is important in the context of accepting that we as legislators must ensure the legislation is correct.

In that corporate frame of mind, how will Mr. Curran resist potentially much stronger influence or perhaps intimidation, when he rolled over so easily during that episode?

John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Could we have order please so that we can get the answer?

Mr. Noel Curran:

I appreciate the positive things Deputy Colreavy has said about RTE. Visions do have constraints. In our five-year strategy we tried to produce a realistic document as well as a document with a vision. If the Deputy reads through it, he will see that there are two elements to it. There is a base-case, effective survival element and there are the wider proposals and suggestions in terms of any increase in public funding. However, I agree with the Deputy that there is no point in producing a vision document that is not underpinned by some sense of the financials.

The question of what we do around the number of opt-outs is very interesting. The thing is to ensure that RTE can compete because otherwise we will be swallowed up. These are very big players. Sky is a massive player. Liberty Global, which owns UPC, is a massive layer. Google is also a massive player. The first thing for me is whether RTE is, or can be, in a position to compete.

Some interesting debates are happening about government protectionism, particularly in France. Actions are being taken concerning opt-out channels which are not producing domestic programming. Some interesting debates are taking place at a European level on the implications of that for certain economies. At European level there are new debates and people are beginning to say that this is not just a phenomenon that is happening in Ireland.

As regards other elements, we want to see investment in Irish programming and encouragement can be given across the board. People say that RTE is the only one investing and that it has a monopoly on it. We want a vibrant independent sector and want to see as many broadcasters as possible investing in that. For them, the economies of scale do not make sense because buying acquired programming, or effectively dumping UK programming where one has already paid for the rights and written it off in UK accounts, is just easy money. It is not a straightforward question but there are certainly actions we could take. The first one is that we are in a position where we can compete with them.

I wrote personally to the BAI to say we were moving Raidió na Gaeltachta from a complementary service to a core service. It was a mistake on our part to put it in as complementary. It was a tool in terms of dividing up services. There were no recommendations attached to being a complementary service compared with a core service. I went down to Raidió na Gaeltachta and heard an impassioned articulation of how they felt about that classification. My colleagues and I came away from that meeting and changed our policy on it. That in itself is, I hope, a signal of where Raidió na Gaeltachta fits. If there is additional public funding, the Irish language is a core element of what we do as a public service. It would benefit from that also. We are also investing in a digital hub and a range of different things around the Irish language.

As regards the leadership position, we only published the report two or three weeks ago. We are absolutely committed to that leadership position. Because the report was confidential we were not able to open discussions as to where this persons sits, who he or she reports to and what are the reporting lines. It was not a widely known document. The document has now been published so I can assure the Deputy that those discussions on where that person sits, who he or she reports to and exactly what authority he or she has are now openly taking place. We hope to conclude those discussions sometime in the next couple of weeks and then move forward with an appointment. That appointment is key because one of that person's first jobs will be to come back with a plan for implementation of the rest of the Irish language policy. I have been heartened by the reaction we have received from a lot of different groups to that policy. There is an expectation out there and I have told people that we will be pressing ahead with it - now that we can talk more openly - once we iron out where this person sits within the organisation.

I will ask Mr. Kennedy to talk about the specific defamation issue. On a general level, we do 40 hours of live news and current affairs every week. We do more investigative journalism on our main channel than the BBC, which has a budget of €7 billion. We do more investigative journalism and live programming than almost anyone else among our European counterparts. That is going to mean that we will make mistakes but we have not pulled back from it. We made a dreadful mistake in recent years and in the middle of all that, at the height of the controversy, we put out an award-winning programme on the trafficking of women for prostitution. We have put out programmes on crèches and a range of other issues, plus what we do on a daily basis. We are not a weak organisation. We deal with this on a daily basis and we receive legal threats every week. We should not get a pat on the back for it because this is the space we are in. We are committed to it, need to do it and are publicly funded. There is no weakening of resolve. We make individual practical decisions on what is before us and then move on.

I want to assure the committee that is very much the case in this regard. I will ask Mr. Kennedy to comment now.

Mr. Eamonn Kennedy:

I am sorry to hear that Deputy Colreavy was getting nose bleeds.

Michael Colreavy (Sligo-North Leitrim, Sinn Fein)
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That was tongue in cheek.

Mr. Eamonn Kennedy:

Just to give a bit of background, in here the Deputy has absolute privilege but outside it is strict liability for people who open their mouth. The standard text on defamation is about 1,000 pages long and is very dense. I sweated blood and tears over that document, which summarises as best as possible how the strict liability system works. Even if one does not get through it all, if one gets through the first 22 pages, one will see in practical terms how the system operates. I can understand the Deputy's point that the Government might seek to push RTE. However, it is highly unlikely that the Government or Ministers would try to use defamation law. That is a rarity.

I assume the Deputy is talking about a situation where Government Ministers and Departments try to force RTE to take a certain line. That is an entirely different kettle of fish to the system that works down in the courts.

The first point the Deputy made was that RTE rolled over, but I am afraid I cannot agree with that. I would not agree with it for the following reasons. There is a range of cases that RTE has to deal with, as do most publishers. They invariably give rise to a range of issues that all publishers are familiar with. In some instances one can work with what the law provides to try to defend them, whether that is to hold the line or run them and win in court. However, there are often circumstances where to continue to defend something in terms of the system that operates down at the Four Courts is foolhardy. That is the situation that RTE finds itself in, as do a lot of the other publishers.

Mr. Brian Dalton:

I will comment generally on the marketplace and why we referenced the nature of the competition. Ireland is the most open market for advertising in Europe. The number of stations that sell advertising in Ireland has doubled since 2008. We are dual-funded so 53% of our revenue comes from the licence fee.

The balance must come from other sources, but there has been a huge decline in our ability to generate income through other means because of the intense competition that now exists. This issue is crucially important in terms of policy, because the amount of revenue we have is likely to decrease unless some stability can be brought to bear around our public funding. We are looking at the potential for achieving efficiencies that will help to create that stability but, overall, the amount of funding available to us for public service broadcasting is in decline because the advertising market is being shared by so many different players, many of them major international players. To give an example, the subscription market in Ireland is valued at €600 million and there is massive discounting and content dumping taking place which is targeting advertising expenditure. One cannot do anything about that - it is the nature of free competition - but it does have implications for an organisation like RTE which is dual funded.

Paudie Coffey (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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I welcome Mr. Curran and his team and thank them for their presentation. It is important that we continuously evaluate what RTE is delivering in terms of public service broadcasting. I am generally supportive of the content it delivers, which is often of a high quality. The Irish people acknowledge that quality, particularly in terms of its coverage of national events and national and regional news coverage.

On the issue of sustainability, the current management inherited an organisation that was established at a time when there was not nearly as much penetration from competing broadcasters. That in itself is a weakness and, as such, the decision to review how RTE does its business and its entire broadcasting model is welcome. Pay structures, most notably, had become totally unsustainable. I do not raise this to make a cheap political cut. It is beyond belief that we got to a stage where some broadcasters were receiving in excess of €700,000 per annum. RTE is not alone in offering hugely inflated wages - many other organisations did the same - but it is now left in the position of having to revise its entire business and service delivery model in a context where it faces ever greater challenges and a much more competitive environment. The organisation is fighting on several fronts, which we should acknowledge. I urge Mr. Curran continuously to revise the contracts of highly paid broadcasters when they come up for renewal. As Deputy McEntee observed, young broadcasters have the potential and talent to deliver if given the chance. Nobody is indispensable, including politicians and broadcasters. There is always somebody else to step up to the mark.

RTE is facing significant challenges in terms of competition in the market with the advent of digital television and the proliferation of international producers of content. In addition, there is the on-line challenge from platforms like Netflix, which appeal to young people in particular and inevitably eat into RTE''s revenue-raising advertising share. How does Mr. Curran propose to address these types of challenges and does he any have specific strategies in this regard? I commend all those involved in the launch of Saorview, which was a massive undertaking with RTE at its forefront. Are there new opportunities for RTE in the area of digital television? I understand that when the new digital platform was being introduced, it incorporated a significant quantity of spare bandwidth. What are RTE's plans to penetrate younger markets via digital platforms? There are potential niche areas of growth for RTE in that area.

Does RTE intend to continue competing in areas where it has already lost the match, so to speak? Its 2fm radio station is aimed at 15 to 24 year olds but has only 8% of the listenership in that demographic. When I was growing up, 2fm was the only station aimed at young listeners and was very popular. I remember that when 2fm DJs were travelling the country, it was the only gig in town. These days, of course, 2fm is competing with regional commercial stations. I am from the south east where Beat 102-103 has almost 60% of the market. Is 2fm trying to compete in a battle which essentially is already lost? I note that it has engaged a number of celebrities in an attempt to boost its figures. Stations like Beat 102-103 have young broadcasters doing the business and they have won that market. Instead of trying to win back lost ground, should RTE not instead be prioritising the development of niche areas where it can win? Does that approach not offer a better chance of sustaining its business?

I note the delegates' concerns in regard to defamation law. It is essential that we, as legislators, seek to protect robust public debate. We will note the views put forward today.

Mr. Noel Curran:

I thank Deputy Coffey for his complimentary comments at the outset of his contribution. In regard to digital television, the challenges in that regard are something of which we are acutely aware. We are working and living with them every day. The Deputy is right to highlight the advent of services like Netflix and others. It is important to bear in mind that we live close to one of the most well funded and best broadcasting markets in the world. We have faced that competition since our foundation. We are now facing increasing competition from huge multinationals like Sky which are looking increasingly at exclusive acquired programming rights, including the sports broadcasting rights market. It will be interesting to see where that ends up over the next period. As I said, we are used to facing that kind of competition.

Digital poses particular problems and challenges for us, which is why we launched a new digital strategy. We have restructured our digital division by moving it out to the different divisions. Digital has been completely integrated into the newsroom, for example, a development which my colleague, Mr. Bakhurst, might talk about presently. Our News Now app is one of the most downloaded apps in the country and we are constantly reviewing it. The RTE player has been very successful for us and we are already considering where we go from here with it. These are issues we discuss on a daily basis. On top of that, we must not lose sight of the fact that Irish people like traditional linear viewing. In fact, they are watching it in increasing numbers, even among the younger demographics. What is different is that they are doing other things while watching, which poses particular problems for us. These are issues we have been working on for several years. We have introduced a number of innovations in this regard and are very conscious of the need for continuous development. Despite what some people externally might think, RTE has reacted to competition. We reacted to the UK channels, to TV3 and to Newstalk. We can adapt and we are adapting, particularly in the digital space.

Saorview has been much more successful for us than we ever anticipated, particularly in second homes. The latest figures are above 700,000. Although a significant portion relates to second televisions, we really did not expect to be in 700,000 homes at this stage. That success has led us to consider what the next innovation should be in regard to Saorview, an issue that was discussed only a few weeks ago at the executive board. I cannot go into too much detail at this stage other than to say that we are developing the proposal in our strategy document, Saorview Connected. It is about growing Saorview as a brand and a proposition and positioning ourselves for what we expect is going to happen in terms of broadband penetration. Saorview is a national brand which could well become the largest platform in the country in the next 12 months. We have started to look at how we can position and utilise that brand to best effect.

Reference was made to where we are competing. I will ask Mr. Bakhurst to discuss some of the digital changes, particularly around the newsroom, but I do not believe we have lost the match on 2FM. We have taken a hammering in the first half but I do not believe we have lost the match. We have made several tough decisions in RTE in recent years because we have had to. No one in this organisation has been afraid of making tough decisions if they believed it was necessary. The station has an 8% share and an 800,000 or 400,000 daily reach. Fully 41% of the audience is under 35 years. The equivalent figure for Radio 1 and others is 10%. Those listeners are still the youngest audience we have and we are moving it even younger in terms of the changes. We have not given up the ghost on 2FM. Some of the changes need to be bedded down and then we will assess where we are. We will see. No one is under any illusions about the fact we need to turn 2FM around. However, it provides a service to a much broader range of younger people than most people realise. Mr. Bakhurst will answer the question on digital changes.

Mr. Kevin Bakhurst:

I will address some of Deputy Coffey's comments about talent and presenters. We review contracts when they come up and we will take a tough position to get value for our licence fee payers. Deputy Coffey mentioned young broadcasters. As a public service broadcaster, it is important for RTE to bring through new young talent. Deputy Coffey is absolutely right on that. We have programmes like "News2Day" in the newsroom. Presenters have come through that programme, including Carla O'Brien, who came in from outside. She did one year on that programme and she is now a news reporter in the newsroom. There is a new presenter on that programme, Orla Walsh. She came in through an open condition having finished a media course. Several people did screen tests. I have no wish to flatter her too much but she is talent for the future, I am sure.

Overall, in news and current affairs in terms of the balance of talent, we should be bringing through new talent, younger talent and good value talent. However, it is critical for us that on our key high profile programmes like "Prime Time" and "Morning Ireland", we have some of the best talent because that is what the audience expects. We will lose some people. I know our competitors are talking to one or two people whom they are hoping to lure away from us. It is a constant battle. Let us consider "Prime Time" last night with Miriam O'Callaghan and Claire Byrne. On a very important high profile programme the presenters must have credibility, a suitable background and the journalism. That is what audiences expect. There is a constant balancing act between value for money and having the key talent that the audiences deserve and expect from us.

Mr. Noel Curran:

My colleague, Ms Breda O'Keeffe, will come in on another point raised by Deputy Coffey.

Ms Breda O'Keeffe:

Deputy Coffey called on RTE to examine its business model. I believe we really did that in 2012. We undertook large organisation-wide restructuring. We examined all our areas of activity across the board in that period and completed a major restructuring programme, which the committee will have seen references to in our 2012 annual report. More than 350 people left the organisation during that period and in excess of 500 people had left during the previous five years. However, we continue to make broadly the same level of programming and support the same level of services. We have really restructured.

Significantly, our cost base has been restructured. The opening statements referred to how our cost base has reduced by 30% in the past five years, a significant achievement. The challenges for us will continue to be on the funding side. We have a history of managing our costs, although one might suggest we have come from a high base.

Another question mentioned earlier was whether we were efficient. We have benchmarked ourselves against our European counterparts and we compare favourably. The work is never complete and we are continuing on that road. Our five year strategy has specific targets for efficiency and will continue with that. Much of that work was done in 2012 when we restructured. The reduction we have achieved in the area of top talent is on average of the order of 30%. We have been perfectly open about the cuts. They are significant and range from 20% up to 68%. We will continue to monitor them. We disclose our figures on top talent. If we were to draw up an Ireland-wide top talent list, they would not all be from RTE. Probably four or five of the top talents from around Ireland would be non-RTE people at this point.

John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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To bring the discussion to a conclusion, I will group questions. Deputy Dooley is first, followed by Deputy O'Donovan, Deputy Harrington and Deputy Griffin.

Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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I will be brief because many of the areas have been covered. I welcome the presentation from Mr. Curran. I am very much a supporter of public service broadcasting. I support fully the remarks Mr. Curran has made about the commercial sector and the issues around the control by wealthy individuals and organisations. That is a difficult challenge RTE must face and one in respect of which the organisation should get more support from the Government and the political process generally. The emergence of the large private commercial sector has implications for balance, fairness, impartiality and accuracy. This is something the Legislature should examine more carefully. On balance, I believe RTE does a hell of a good job. We have had our issues and RTE has been before the committee in respect of these. Rightly, they are dealt with in that way. However, it the case of today that we should recognise what RTE does.

Mr. Kennedy set out the legal case very well and I thank him for the documents with which we were provided in advance. It has helped to take some of the heat out of that particular issue. I have no wish to get into the specifics of the matter but I believe that had RTE allowed the case to run and it ended up costing the organisation tens of thousands of euro, or perhaps more had it run into millions, we would have had the representatives of RTE before the committee and we would have asked why they did not settle more quickly. I maintain it was a job well done in that regard.

Some points have not been addressed, specifically the decision of UTV to come into the television market in this jurisdiction. Obviously, it is another channel similar to how one might view Google, BSkyB or whatever other challengers are around. Does RTE have specific concerns about UTV's presence in the not too distant future, as that organisation has set out?

The representatives from RTE have addressed the matter of the broadcasting charge and that RTE does not have an issue around community radio stations. That point has been covered.

Ms O'Keeffe made it clear that RTE has done cost restructuring. From the documents I have seen, I largely support that view. Streamlining and cost reduction through efficiencies have an elasticity, and an organisation can get to a point where these changes begin to affect the quality of the programme and the type of support structures around the development of programming which are such an important part of public service broadcasting. It is important to allow RTE to have the balance, fairness, accuracy and impartiality that is the bedrock of public service broadcasting. It seems to me that RTE is reaching that critical point below which the organisation cannot go. I say this in the context of the Government's decision, through the budgetary process this year, to reduce the RTE licence fee revenues further by €5 million. How did RTE manage to survive considering that prior to the cuts the organisation had budgeted to include that expected €5 million? Has this had implications for RTE's capacity to continue to deliver on its mandate?

I cannot recall the exact report but one of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland reports which I read some time last summer clearly stated that if RTE was to take on the challenge it had to take on in terms of developing more Irish content, more moneys would be required, including more State funding. Does RTE envisage this coming from the broadcasting charge? Does RTE believe the State will have to assist it in some other way?

Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael)
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I thank the RTE representatives for attending. Like the previous speakers, I support much of the work RTE does. In particular, initiatives in recent years like "Love/Hate" have lifted the bar. However, we would be failing in our duty in this committee if we did not separate what RTE is doing well from what it could be doing better.

Following on from what previous speakers said about sustainability, and salaries in particular, the company might bemoan the fact that a high profile figure has left RTE but there must be a differentiation between RTE and the others. RTE is a public company and they are not, and there is a greater expectation on the part of the public of RTE in the same way as it has a greater expectation of us. Some of the figures on presenters' pay that emanate from RTE are still far too excessive for people to accept. I find it particularly irritating to hear somebody on a Saturday or Sunday morning trawl through what Deputies, Senators, councillors, the Taoiseach and Ministers earn, quite rightly, when she might be earning twice or three times what the Taoiseach or a Minister earns. Until recently she might have earned twice what the President of the United States of America earns, and currently she earns more than the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany. People find that hard to take, particularly given that RTE, as an organisation, would require additional supports from the taxpayer by way of the broadcasting charge. They might appreciate there is a public service element to that but we are all in this together and nobody can be excluded from the type of haircuts that are required. Certain personalities in RTE seem to be insulated in terms of their salary, which I do not believe has been taken seriously enough. The representatives will respond by saying that some people's salaries were cut by 17%, 20% or 30% but that is not the point. The point is that the baseline figure was ridiculous in terms of what one would expect from a public service entity. Those Celtic tiger baseline figures must be forgotten and salaries benchmarked on what is sustainable in 2014, and I do not believe RTE has reached those figures yet.
I refer to an issue very close to home. It is a bugbear of mine which I have raised here previously with the representatives. "Oireachtas Report" is probably RTE's only interaction with the public in terms of the work done by this committee, for example. "Oireachtas Report" appears to be broadcast for the benefit of insomniacs, people home from the pub where they should not be or those working nights. It is broadcast at a very bad time. Some people might believe we do not do much in these Houses but RTE broadcasting the programme at a time when it does not expect people to watch it, perhaps only very small numbers, is in stark contrast to what UPC has done with broadcasting Oireachtas debates. It started broadcasting them on I believe Channel 800 on a trial basis. I believe it is now broadcasting them on Channel 200, which proves that people tune into us. I am sure there are people tuned into what is happening in the Dáil Chamber now but one cannot find those debates on RTE on a daily basis. One must either go online to the Oireachtas website or watch them on the UPC channel. If we contrast that with BBC Parliament, it broadcasts proceedings from the national Parliament on a daily basis. As legislators we are criticised about attention to detail and so on, and rightly so, but when people tune into "Oireachtas Report" they see only two people sitting in the Dáil Chamber. They do not see the people working in the four committee rooms questioning people such as the representatives. That is a disservice to democracy and as the public service broadcaster, RTE has an onus to address that.
Mention was made of 2FM. I was particularly disappointed with the representatives' reply in that regard. 2FM broadcast a strong flagship programme from Limerick. RTE closed the London office, which was probably the wrong action to take at the time. Last night, we saw Sharon Ní Bheoláin broadcasting from in front of Buckingham Palace. It was obvious that there was not a London office from which to do that, yet that office could make a huge difference in terms of the upcoming state visit by the President to the United Kingdom and so on. RTE broadcast a very successful programme daily from Limerick and it was scrapped. As a result, 15,000 people went on Facebook to try to have it returned but they were unsuccessful. I wonder about RTE's commitment to the regions, particularly given that show had a huge listenership and traction, yet it was scrapped. In the Limerick area 45% of the listenership do not listen to 2FM; it is only 11%. However, that programme broadcast in the regions was ended.
In terms of what people are doing when they are watching programmes, those watching the Ukranian-Russian events proved what people are doing when they are watching RTE; they are tweeting. I know RTE had a severe technical glitch the day of that broadcast, which in fairness was addressed, but it proves that people are engaging with the broadcaster, yet sometimes the broadcaster is behind the curve in regard to that engagement.
Mr. Bakhurst might reply to this question. What level of monitoring does RTE do of the tweets and online traction in response to the programmes it broadcasts, and how does it improve programming as a result? Consumers using Twitter or Facebook to make a complaint is better than sending in a postcard.
People are often critical of RTE, and I am one of them. We expect a great deal from the public service broadcaster but the annual Christmas schedule is like the recurring problem of the weight of schoolbags or the back to school costs for parents, and invariably there is a post mortem of the schedule after Christmas. On behalf of people sitting at home at Christmas and as a member of this committee, I decided to watch RTE but if we compare an RTE Guidefrom three years ago to this year's RTE Guide, "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" is still on the schedule, as is "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang". New Year's Eve is supposed to be a happy night but this year RTE wheeled out a person who is on the radio Monday to Friday. I accept he serves an important role in terms of listening to people's concerns but New Year's Eve is supposed to be a happy night, yet in the countdown to 2014 we had to listen to everything that went wrong in 2013 - talk about starting off the year on a happy note. If RTE expects people to stay at home and not go to the pub, and in fairness RTE did not encourage me to go to the pub, would it please look at these schedules?

Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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We could have a party political broadcast from the Taoiseach in future.

Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael)
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I ask the representatives to examine these schedules in future-----

Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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Sweetness and light.

Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael)
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-----and try to understand its audience. Gene Wilder in "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" was big in 1974 but he is not big now.

Noel Harrington (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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We often get taken by the Kerry people but we will try to get the hurling one out of the way first.

I thank Noel Curran and his colleagues for attending. The licence fee and public funding brings us together today. For many households the €160 annual licence fee is a lot of money but I believe it is good value for money for the content we get. If I took my family to Croke Park for a concert or whatever, I would probably end up paying twice that. If we are talking about fees, we should consider the context.

On the content, much of it is subjective. I would not appreciate all of the content but the content I am interested in is of extremely good quality. That is what encourages most of us to watch RTE as much as we do. Obviously, we do not watch everything and therefore we rely on the listenership figures and, increasingly, we are getting better value for money.

On the financial side, we are presented with reports on a constant basis, many of them from public bodies, and every one of them will indicate that in the past five years the organisation's funding is down 10% or 20%, that it has maintained its service levels, done exceptionally well and so on. I could mention every local authority doing exactly the same. Having listened to many of their representatives for so long, one has to conclude that such huge reductions in funding and maintaining service levels was difficult and painful but there were many easily extracted costs.

Now it is coming to the more difficult areas in terms of achieving those financial objectives. RTE is not the only body to experience that kind of reduction in funding and still claim it maintains the service. While it does so, this applies throughout the nation and everyone has suffered in that regard.

On the strategy, I listened to a report this week indicating that companies such as Facebook are investing millions of dollars in new technologies. Is a five-year strategy for RTE too long in an environment where technology is changing as rapidly in broadcasting, advertising and all the different headings? Is a five-year strategy tying the organisation down and not allowing it the flexibility it needs to adapt?

The witnesses mentioned the potential threats to the Irish market by the global players that are increasingly coming in and taking the advertising revenue. What efforts is RTE making to go against the flow and target the much vaunted and publicised diaspora of tens of millions of people throughout the world who might be interested in accessing and paying for RTE content on a daily basis?

Is RTE realising the full potential of Saorview? Mr. Curran said earlier that it was a great success - more than RTE had bargained for. However, could more be done there?

I listened to what Mr. Kennedy had to say on libel, etc. The RTE submission stated that our system is dangerous for freedom of expression and that cannot be ignored. From both this meeting and in engagements we have had with other media organisations, it is clear they would like to have something along the lines of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution apply here. I am not sure if that is the right way to go. We must also remember that the United States also has an amendment relating to the right to bear arms. While I know certain people in this country would like the right to bear arms, I do not believe many of us would agree that is the right way to go. It is about achieving a balance.

In that regard reference was made to the recent controversy on the "Saturday Night Live" programme and "A Mission to Prey" which this committee addressed approximately 18 months ago. In any or all of the examples he gave of the different jurisdictions in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, United States, could Mr. Kennedy say that either of those two would not have ended up with the same result? Are we using those two issues as a Trojan horse to make a case to change legislation? I agree we might need to make a change because I have read RTE's examples of how opinion has to be dealt with in Ireland and the opinion of someone else on whose opinion it relies is dealt with. It seems a bit onerous, but we need to be careful we do not use extreme cases that equally might not have succeeded in other jurisdictions to make a more substantial case to revise legislation in the area.

Brendan Griffin (Kerry South, Fine Gael)
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I thank the witnesses for attending. They are reaching the point of overload with the questioning from four of us together, so I will try to be as brief as possible.

In some sections of the media RTE bashing is the done thing, which I never quite understood. The great majority of the work RTE does is valuable and positive. When I grew up on the western seaboard in the 1980s and 1990s it was very much two-channel land. As a child, many of the events in my life were shared with RTE, including New Year's Eve in 1988 and watching the 1994 World Cup. As we did not have too many options, RTE shaped many of my generation. One of my earliest television memories is of the debut of Zig and Zag on afternoon television. That is where I am coming from.

I do not believe anybody today mentioned RTE's sports contribution to Irish society. I have always been very impressed that for a relatively small country with small national broadcaster we are up there with the best in terms of coverage. While we cannot compete with companies such as Sky for live English Premier League soccer action, there has always been excellent coverage of sporting events. I compliment the recent addition to the television sporting schedule, "Soccer Republic" which covers much domestic as well as international soccer and is an excellent programme. Unfortunately, RTE lost its English Premier League soccer highlights programme this year. Perhaps a more affordable way of bringing that back to our screens could be considered for the 2014-15 season. Now that Liverpool is going well, it might be nice to see it screened on Irish television.

I am baffled over how the State broadcaster would consider screening some programmes, including celebrities getting married or couples competing with each other to have the best night out possible in the city. I do not understand how RTE regards that as coming under its remit.

Regarding 2FM, we have a number of commercial radio stations which cover that remit. Is it necessary for 2FM to continue to come under the auspices of RTE? I am not seeking the discontinuation of 2FM but I wonder if RTE should maintain responsibility for it into the future.

Last year there was a very serious current affairs issue with certain tapes that were discovered. It was very prominent in nearly all sections of Irish media, both print and broadcast, and yet RTE would not touch it. I am sure the witnesses know the case to which I am referring. Why did the State broadcaster not cover it?

While I welcome RTE's improving financial situation, what is the forecast for 2014, 2015 and 2016? Are those years expected to be positive?

What controls are in place to ensure that the payment of costs for transporting guests and staff to and from RTE is not abused? What system does RTE have for the procurement of transport? What is the procedure where national or international "celebrities" appear on programmes? What is the system for paying for their transport expenses? While I do not wish to point to any individual case, I believe this needs to be highlighted.

Some weeks ago, there was a lady on "The Late Late Show", which I would see as an institution that has done very positive work in informing debate in this country, who was brought over from the United Kingdom and had absolutely nothing to offer public debate or anything else, other than to be what I would call a freak show. How much was spent in bringing that person here? Did RTE pay the expenses for someone who I would see as self-promoting?

As Members of Oireachtas Éireann, we all have an allowance for travel and accommodation and so on. Why is it the case that if Oireachtas Members are on various programmes, their travel expenses are covered? By all accounts, one Deputy ran up a €500 taxi bill to go on an RTE programme where he was promoting himself. Why is that the case? That is just one example, and if it is happening across the board, why is it allowed to continue? If RTE is looking at reducing costs, is it not something that should be tackled immediately?

Mr. Noel Curran:

I will go through all the comments and questions, and if I miss some or if people are unhappy with the level of detail, we can come back to them.

We have concerns about UTV coming into an already crowded market. It has come in under a particular section of the Broadcasting Act 2009, for which it has taken criticism. I do not think UTV deserves criticism for that because it is entitled to come in under that section. It means that UTV is not subject to the broadcasting levy and that it does not have requirements for Irish programming. Frankly, if I was the chief executive of TV3 I would be very unhappy about it, but at the same time I think that is an issue for legislation. Another issue to examine in the future is the split that seems to exist. There are things UTV does not get, such as automatic carriage and a whole range of different things, but there are so many platforms now that businesses will get carriage if they negotiate it.

UTV is a very good company. It knows how to make money and has proven that everywhere it has gone. I expect it is not coming into this market out of some sense of public service or for the good of its health. Its management think there is money to be made here and that is an issue for all of us. It is probably more of an issue for some of our competitors, because UTV does not have the requirement to invest in Irish programming, so its character will be much more distinctive from the character of RTE. However, it is a crowded market and another player is coming into it.

Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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So Mr. Curran's concern is that the commercial side of RTE's business will be affected.

Mr. Noel Curran:

UTV's chief executive has said that TV3 has worked in the past against RTE and that he wanted to work with RTE. I welcome hearing what exactly that entails. I have huge respect for UTV. It is very good at making money. It is coming into a crowded market and still it thinks it will make money, so the commercial pie is shrinking. The digital operators are increasing. Sky is launching more opt outs and now we have UTV coming in, and there is only so much of that commercial income to go around, so I have a concern on that front.

The €5 million reduction relates to a couple of other questions around profitability for this year. We budgeted to break even this year. That was based on introducing a range of different costs. I heard about the €5 million when it was announced. That had not been signalled and I understand Cabinet confidentiality and confidentiality about the budget. There also seems to be some confusion, or perhaps not confusion-----

Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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If it was a positive story, they would have got to Mr. Curran quicker.

Mr. Noel Curran:

I think it arose quite close to the budget, so we are working through what that means because our initial projections were based on further reductions. We need to get those reductions out of the way and then work through what we are going to do, but it is difficult for us. We start working on a budget in August, and if we get a €5 million hit in December, that will throw us, so we are working through that.Several sports rights are up for negotiation at the moment and the loss of that €5 million is bound to impact on what we can bid for those rights. We are working through where we are at the moment.
More State funding is for programmes. This is through the broadcasting charge. I have heard people say publicly that when things go bad for RTE, we start looking for public money. We have not sought a licence fee increase. We have submitted in the appendices the increases that all semi-State and comparative private sector companies have received. We decided that we would sort ourselves out and sort out our own finances. We are looking at the new broadcasting charge and we want to make a commitment on programmes, and I think the specific question was about what we were going to do with it. Our commitment will be to programmes. It would be absolutely untenable for me to come in here or to go to a Minister and say that we want to get a share of whatever is the new broadcasting charge because we will not exist if we do not get it. That is not the position we have taken. We have said that we are looking for increased public funding to compete with our competitors and to provide more to the public.
I know Deputy O'Donovan from being here previously, but I also know the public have had a lot of concerns about salaries. That is why we took the action we took. I firmly believe that five of the top ten paid presenters in this country are not on RTE. We are not like them and we are not like our commercial competitors, but we do compete with them. I do not want to get into individuals and I do not want to get into criticism because it is a natural comparison, but if we pay someone €290,000 on a contract, which is the reduced fee, and if we take Ministers, Chancellors and Prime Ministers around Europe - The Irish Timesdid an interesting actuarial survey on what those pension payments are worth - there is no pension payment on top of what we pay. That is not to say they were not overpaid. That is not to say the public do not have concerns. I just think that some of the comparisons made directly between this-----

Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael)
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If a person is on that sort of money, he or she is in RTE for over 20 years, whereas a Prime Minister or Chancellor will be there for probably seven or eight years. If that person has not made provision for his or her pension over a 20 year period, having been paid in excess of €300,000 in today's money, then that is that person's problem.

Mr. Noel Curran:

Absolutely. All I am saying is that the comparisons with the people used are complicated. If people use figures of two times and three times, that is complicated. However, that is not the issue here. The main issue is that we addressed the problem. It was a difficult problem to address, frankly. We got co-operation from the people involved - again I need to say this publicly - and we have taken substantial reductions out of that. This does not mean that we will not judge each case on an individual basis, nor does it mean that we do not realise that the public has concerns about this issue. That is why we took the action we took.

I will ask Mr. Bakhurst to answer the question on "Oireachtas Report".

Mr. Kevin Bakhurst:

I think I have heard the Deputy's line about insomniacs before from the Minister. It is tricky. There must quite a lot of insomniacs because the audience is quite substantial, even though the programme is on late at night. The other thing we have managed to do by producing it more quickly is that we run it earlier now.

We re-run it the following morning, so using the News Now channel and also using online, people do get that opportunity. The News Now channel, which is basically available in Saorview and UPC homes, covers a lot of business here and a lot of committees, as well as business in the Dáil itself. That is well viewed and we cover a lot of parliamentary occasions on that channel. People do appreciate that.

The question was asked about monitoring social media and we do monitor it systematically. The central communications department at RTE monitors all social media about programmes. I was monitoring the Ukrainian-Russian episode myself. I went out quite quickly to respond to it, much to the disgust of my press officer. I did so because I thought we needed to respond to it straight away. Sometimes it is a good gauge of where the audience is but, on the other hand, it is not representative. A lot of people are on there because they have their own causes. It is useful to monitor it overall and is quite useful sometimes to gauge how a programme is going.

There were a lot of comments about "Prime Time" last night and a high level of interest in what they were doing last night. On the other hand, a lot of people just have singular obsessions and use social media, including the hash tag of "Prime Time", to come on and say whatever they like to say. That is their prerogative but it is not, therefore, a definitive guide to where the audience is. It is a useful tool, however, and we do monitor it. Weekly, the central communications department gives us a summary of the social media activity which we now include in our audience information. We have whatever e-mails or letters come in and we also have a summary of social media activity and comments on social media. That goes to all programme makers and is available within RTE.

Mr. Noel Curran:

In terms of 2FM and Limerick, we are absolutely committed to the regions. We went through a massive financial restructuring with substantial cutbacks. We closed the London office, as the committee has highlighted. We want to reopen that office when we can afford to. That was a difficult decision for us, but we have not closed regional offices. We have gone into local arrangements and have moved offices, but we have not pulled out regional correspondents. That could have been a very easy, simple decision. It was a matter of a commitment we have that we are a national broadcaster.

At a forum like this, I do not want to start talking in detail about individuals. As regards the changes that were made in 2FM around Limerick, the person has not left 2FM. They have moved to a different part of the schedule, which is worth noting. On a general level, when I came into this position, a new plan had just been launched for 2FM. I felt we needed to let that plan run. That plan stabilised the station and I congratulate everyone involved in that, but it stabilised the falls and that is not good enough. These are difficult decisions but stabilising the falls in 2FM is not good enough for us, so tough decisions have to be made. That does not mean we are in any way pulling back on our commitment to the regions.

Commercial broadcasters, particularly in Ireland, ignore the Christmas schedule. They do not make much money so they largely ignore it. That is not a criticism, as it is an understandable decision. We do not make much money but we invest heavily in the Christmas schedule. It does not mean that everyone is going to like everything what is on, but if one looks back through the most viewed programmes, we continually do better than our competitors. We never paint it as a public service but it is in a way, in that our commercial rivals invest very little in that schedule. I agree that it is an important programme. Without going into individuals, we had reviews of some of the new year's output last year in which I was involved. It is fair to say that some worked and some did not. The ones that did not are unlikely to be repeated in that way. That is what happens with programmes that one makes across the board, and I am not singling out any individuals.

Paudie Coffey (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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We will be able to stay at home next year.

Mr. Noel Curran:

I am not singling out any individuals in that regard. Deputy Harrington raised the issue of efficiencies, so I will ask Ms O'Keeffe to answer that.

Ms Breda O'Keeffe:

The Deputy asked whether we had done enough. He also mentioned a lot of other semi-State companies that have come in and have a similar story because similar economic conditions apply to them as well. We have taken €130 million out of the cost base. There was some low-hanging fruit earlier on and it was taken out. However, even in the last two years, we have taken over €50 million out of the cost base through a wide-scale restructuring, so it was not just low-hanging fruit at that point. We are continuing to do that so it is an ongoing journey for us, although where we can go at this stage is very minimal because the cost reductions have more or less been done.

The Deputy also asked what other semi-State companies have done. I am not here to throw cold water on anything that any other semi-State company has done because it is difficult for anyone in receipt of public funding to have that funding reduced. Our own public funding was reduced by the order of €20 million over the past five years, but the large part of our funding disappeared because our commercial revenue declined by €95 million. We suffer from that aspect of being a dual funded broadcaster in that our commercial as well as our State funding has been reduced.

In the appendices we submitted today, we gave the committee comparisons with other semi-State companies. We would argue that we have done more than double what others have done because we have had to. We are not crowing over that but we have had to do so because of our funding requirement.

As regards whether we have done enough, cost cutting is only one metric. We have spent quite a bit of time benchmarking against our European counterparts, that is, other broadcasters such as ORF, Danmarks Radio and NRK in Norway. We would compare favourably with them on a cost per hour basis. We have also done studies on the cost of our orchestras and we compare favourably in that regard. We believe we benchmark reasonably well or fairly well with other broadcasters in that respect.

Deputy Dooley mentioned the conflict with cost reduction, that at some point one begins to start cutting into programmes. Questions were raised about the London office and various programme cuts, and that will always be the tension. Cost reduction gives rise to certain casualties that are not always appealing. However, we try to maintain output, and despite all those cost reductions, our output levels have not been reduced that significantly over that period.

Mr. Noel Curran:

I wish to address a couple of the other questions, including whether a five year strategy is too long. The answer is yes, but it was a legislative requirement. When we saw it, I went to the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland and expressed the view that in a changing technological world, five years was a very long time. The BAI accepted this and said that the concentration could be on the initial two to three years with the rest not quite aspirational but less concrete in terms of the actual plans and on a broader level. I agree with the Deputy on that matter but we were aware of that and clarified it with the BAI which accepted it. Therefore, the three years were very concentrated in terms of what we wanted to do and the rest were on a broader level.

Noel Harrington (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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Is there a review process of the strategy?

Mr. Noel Curran:

Yes, there will be. There is a continual review because the commercial income did not meet our expectations last year. We are continually reviewing it. The Deputy will have seen that in the statement we made concerning Raidió na Gaeltachta as well.

In terms of premium, I said two years ago that it was an important service for us to provide internationally. I felt we should be providing it internationally. It is not absolutely within our control. There are elements of this in terms of public value tests and other tests. I would hope that we will be in a clearer position in the next three to four weeks to know, not what our plans are because we know what they are, but whether we can move towards some kind of an announcement in that regard. I would reiterate that this is and has been a priority for us.

I agree that more can be done and will be done with Saorview. We have not had the marketing budget and have been constrained financially in linking the Saorview platform with platforms like Freesat in any overt way such as through combination marketing. We believe that the combination of Saorview with some of those satellite services is a potent service, but we have been restricted in how overtly we can say that. However, we have plans in that regard. I have talked about Saorview being connected and we have other marketing plans. I accept the findings of the recent BAI report from Ono, but it highlighted that Saorview and FirstView homes were 160,000 and may reduce.

I felt very strongly that they completely ignored the second television phenomenon. Having the Saorview platform in 700,000 homes, be it in regard to the first or second television, gives us a marketing tool that we need to expand on.

I will ask Mr. Eamon Kennedy to address defamation. A specific question was asked on whether we are crying wolf in some respects. Perhaps that is not the language that was used. If the "Saturday Night Show" conversation — I am not judging the rights and wrongs to some degree — had been on the Jay Leno show, there would not have been a question of a defamation case. The first amendment, the actual malice criterion and a range of other measures would have applied. Had the conversation been in the United Kingdom, with its new changes to defamation law, the requirement that serious harm must be proven early on might have had an impact. Certainly, we need to wait to see what legal precedents arise from the UK application of honest opinion. I do not know whether Mr. Kennedy has a different view from me on that. What I have expressed is as much a personal view as anything else. Mr. Kennedy is free to contradict me.

Mr. Eamonn Kennedy:

I will answer the question on the Trojan horse. The document I sent in approximately a month ago was written long before any recent controversies or litigation. Therefore, there is no Trojan horse.

Noel Harrington (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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There was no Grand National.

Mr. Eamonn Kennedy:

No Grand National, I am afraid.

The point on the first amendment is interesting. Ultimately, a constitutional change would be required. Even then, I wonder whether the first amendment approach would comply with the European Convention on Human Rights.

The other interesting point is that while people say the first amendment is wonderful and permits much free speech, it must be noted that there are other aspects of the American structure that are less protective of free speech. I refer to the protection of journalists' sources, for example. It is not always black and white and absolute.

The second document I sent in, on opinion, should be borne in mind. The recent controversy necessitates a long, hard look at the detail of the new legislative provision for the protection of opinions. This inspired the document. There are some significant issues in this regard to be considered, not least the fact that Ireland has two constitutional provisions dealing with speech, one of which pertains to freedom of expression, or the public aspect of speaking, and the other of which is the right to communicate, which concerns the more private or day-to-day stuff. When one considers these provisions and what has been included in legislation, including the language used in this regard, one finds that there are genuine concerns behind many of the issues raised.

Mr. Noel Curran:

One has to be careful in that we are talking about defamation internationally. People have a right to sue under current legislation. There is no point in our blaming people. If we defame people, there is no point in our blaming those who sue us or the lawyers. Lawyers do not run RTE. We take advice from lawyers and make decisions, and we need to take responsibility for that. We need to be responsible in what we broadcast. We are not looking for carte blancheauthority to say what we like. We feel that in the case of opinions, particularly those expressed by individuals in the public domain but also those of others, added protection is required. Some of the language on honest opinion has proven to have been very complicated. A number of issues arise but, importantly, we are not looking for a carte blancheto say what we like about people.

Noel Harrington (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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We often believe when talking about public discourse that the whole world revolves around politics. Every crow believes it is the whitest. In reality, however, there is a greater impact on artistic or celebrity issues, for example. These are lucrative. Let us be honest: celebrities sell content. Has a value been put on this? I acknowledge it is difficult to assess. Is this not where the real prize lies in terms of loosening the legislation?

Mr. Noel Curran:

In terms of loosening?

Noel Harrington (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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In terms of bringing it nearer to an arrangement such as the US first amendment.

Mr. Noel Curran:

We operate in a society that expects a national broadcaster. I can only talk from our point of view, but I believe the newspapers and other broadcasters would share my perspective. We are expected to and obliged to have and facilitate debate. We broadcast so much live debate that mistakes will be made. Mistakes aside, people will interpret statements and react to them. Facilitating reasoned debate — I do not mean mud-slinging or saying what one likes about people — to which people, particularly in public life, can take exception requires protection for broadcasters. If the law is very restrictive in this regard, it needs to be examined.

Ms Breda O'Keeffe:

Deputy Griffin asked about transport and guest costs. He asked a general question on how we control those kinds of matters. We manage them individually based on programme budgets. Each programme will have a budget. Within each, there will be line items. There are strict guidelines and appropriate levels of expenditure, including on guest fees and transport. The Deputy mentioned some guests on "The Late Late Show". Many guests promoting their own book or film do not receive a fee because it is a promotional event. However, in the case of many others, for whom there may be international competition, we pay fees to attract them and make the show popular.

With regard to transport costs, I believe the Deputy mentioned a taxi fare of €500. That would abnormal. I certainly have not come across anything like that. We tender for taxis. Where we provide the taxi fares for contributors to programmes or programme guests, the programme producers or PDAs make sure in the first instance they have the most cost-efficient way of getting to the studio. It is not always by taxi. One can come on one's own steam. Where we provide taxes, we tender the arrangements and ensure we get the most cost-effective one. We operate a number of controls.

Brendan Griffin (Kerry South, Fine Gael)
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What is the position on the transportation of staff?

Ms Breda O'Keeffe:

It is the responsibility of staff to get to work, be it in their own car or by public transport or other means, such as walking or cycling.

Brendan Griffin (Kerry South, Fine Gael)
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Is there no company book or passes for the transportation of staff?

Ms Breda O'Keeffe:

Not to and from home. Staff do travel for business abroad or in Ireland and would use public transport or taxis. However, they certainly do not have a pass to travel to and from work. That would not be normal.

Mr. Noel Curran:

Reality television is one of the more controversial genres of programming but it is becoming increasingly popular. We probably went down that route less than others but there is an audience, particularly a younger one. As I stated, we provide our legislative obligations through the broadcasting legislation and in doing so we are required to provide as wide a range of programming for as wide a public as possible. We do much less reality television than some. I do not want to say "the crasser end" but am referring to the reality shows of the kind one sees on the satellite channels. We do a lot less than others but still do it because there is an audience for it.

Brendan Griffin (Kerry South, Fine Gael)
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While RTE produces it and there is an audience, is it part of its remit? Surely there needs to be a standard and a cut-off point.

Mr. Noel Curran:

There has to be a cut-off point in terms of producing it but if we start defining RTE's role, we must ask how we do so. Does one go to a market failure? Does one say RTE's job is to provide anything that commercial television does not provide? In that case, commercial television would basically tell us what programmes we should show. I do not believe the Irish public wants to pay a licence fee for that. It is a question of volume and where the programming sits in our schedule. It usually sits on our second channel late at night. One must ask where it sits, its priority, the expenditure thereon and what should be shown around it.

I believe that RTE should have a wide schedule. If we went too far down that road, we would have serious questions to answer. Our policy of having entertainment programmes is underpinned at European and national level. As I said earlier, it is also underpinned by the public, which wants us to do entertainment programmes as well as everything else.

Brendan Griffin (Kerry South, Fine Gael)
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I suppose I am keen to express my concern that the State broadcaster should not get sucked into a race to the bottom and convey my hope that RTE is aware of many people's concerns about this problem, which should be avoided in the future.

Mr. Brian Dalton:

We monitor quality on a weekly basis. The overall appreciation index for our programmes is over 80%. Quality is at the core of what we do. We track it.

Brendan Griffin (Kerry South, Fine Gael)
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I do not want to sound too negative here. I prefaced my remarks by saying I think the overall approach is very positive.

Mr. Brian Dalton:

Yes. I welcome that.

Ms Breda O'Keeffe:

I want to clarify that there is an exception to what was said about staff use of taxis in response to Deputy Griffin. Our staff do not normally work from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Many of them work out of hours - early in the morning or late at night. We provide taxi transport to some of our staff who work at a time when public transport is not in operation and do not have their own transport. I suppose this is done for safety reasons.

Brendan Griffin (Kerry South, Fine Gael)
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I asked a couple of other questions. The question I asked about an issue with a current affairs topic that arose last year was not answered. I also asked a question about the sports department.

Mr. Kevin Bakhurst:

I can answer the question that was asked about the Lowry tapes. This issue was covered in parts of RTE but not in as high-profile a way as the newspaper involved would have liked to have seen it covered. It was a purely editorial judgment, not just on my part but also involving senior people around the place. When we were criticised in one of the newspapers about our lack of coverage of the matter, I spoke to several people who had been deeply involved in the coverage of the tribunals and the whole matter that was covered in the tapes to see whether their judgment was that the tapes added a huge amount more to the story. The judgment of a number of individuals to whom I spoke was that it merited some coverage but probably not as much as the newspaper involved would have liked us to have given it. As I said to the editor of that newspaper, all of this sparked interest in several related areas which we are still looking at.

Mr. Noel Curran:

Sport is critical for us, particularly when we cover national events and Gaelic games as our national sports. Our coverage of international events in sports like rugby also represents a critical part of our public service. Sport is expensive. We had an absolute bubble in the sports rights sector when Setanta initially expanded and TV3 received an investment of private equity. We managed to hold on to the bulk of what we had. I think people like Glen Killane and Ryle Nugent in our sports department deserve full credit for that. It is getting more difficult. Sky is a huge entity with huge resources. It is becoming more difficult for us to hold on to all of these things, particularly following the reductions in public funding. We compete in an international market. We are committed to sport. We are committed to holding onto sport, but it is becoming increasingly difficult. The Premier League suffered because we needed to make a cutback. We had to decide whether to drop a number of GAA games or to drop the Premier League. We decided to drop the Premier League. We are now making such choices on a daily and weekly basis. We have managed to hold on to sports rights. I think it will be increasingly difficult for us to do so. There is no point saying otherwise. It may have seemed that the hit we took in the budget involved a small amount of money, but €5 million a year would secure an awful lot of domestic sports rights.

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I would like to ask Ms O'Keeffe a question about the €160 television licence, which interests me. I do not know whether she will be able to answer it. Many television and radio advertisements are currently telling people what will happen if they do not pay. Are they working? Does Ms O'Keeffe know whether they have resulted in an increased number of people paying the television licence?

Ms Breda O'Keeffe:

As the Deputy knows, we do not collect the licence fee. An Post is the agent that is responsible for collecting the licence fee on behalf of the Department, which in turn grants us approximately 83% of the overall licence fee pot. Evasion is an issue. While the figures with regard to the level of evasion vary between RTE and the Department, there is agreement that it is between 16% and 18%, which is pretty high. It is one of the highest levels in Europe. The current advertising campaign followed last year's increase in evasion, which can be seen as a response to the economic downturn. We accept that €160 is a great deal of money for a household. I suppose the advertising campaign is helping people to understand that they need to pay the licence fee even if they have a Sky or UPC subscription. I think it is having an impact. The modest recovery in the economy is probably helping as well. Evasion continues to be an issue for us.

Brendan Griffin (Kerry South, Fine Gael)
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I asked a question about the financial projections for the next few years.

Mr. Noel Curran:

I tried to deal with that matter in response to Deputy Harrington. When we went into this year's budget planning process, our aim was to break even or achieve a small surplus. Some further reductions will be required to achieve that. We did not foresee the €5 million reduction, which was announced in the budget and which we are currently working through.

Brendan Griffin (Kerry South, Fine Gael)
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That will somehow have to be found in the current year.

Mr. Noel Curran:

It is going to be very challenging. We are working through how we are going to do that.

John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I would like to draw Mr. Curran's attention to a couple of matters before we conclude. I wanted to wait until the end before making a few comments. He said in his presentation that RTE "is established as a dual-funded, not-for-profit, statutory body". He explained that "its purpose and activities are guaranteed by legislation, it is independently regulated and it is not accountable to wealthy business people, offshore private equity investors or the Government, but rather to the public which funds it". There is a lot in that statement. Is Mr. Curran suggesting that people with bottomless pockets, who are neither accountable nor regulated, are putting RTE at a serious disadvantage? I feel this is an aspect of Mr. Curran's presentation that needs to be addressed.

Mr. Noel Curran:

Frankly, I think that refers to a factual situation. RTE is a not-for-profit body. When RTE was generating surpluses during the boom, they were not distributed back to the management or to outside shareholders. Those funds were reinvested when we started looking at digital terrestrial television in the context of the legislative requirement in that area. I think we are different in this respect. When we make money, we reinvest it in programming or other elements of the schedule.

John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I am not speaking about what RTE does. I accept-----

Mr. Noel Curran:

The factual situation with regard to media ownership in Ireland is that Sky is a multinational company, Communicorp is owned by one of the wealthiest individuals in the world and TV3 is owned by a international private equity firm. I was trying to highlight the differences between RTE and some of the other media companies.

John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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The salary of the high-profile broadcaster who left RTE last year will not be questioned anywhere next year.

Mr. Noel Curran:

Yes.

John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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It will not be in the public domain. Does Mr. Curran believe the fact he has outlined is putting RTE at a serious disadvantage?

Mr. Noel Curran:

It puts us at an absolute serious disadvantage. The broadcaster in question has said on the record that when he was approached, his published fees were immediately quoted. The fact that we had published his fees meant that people knew exactly what to aim for. That is what he said. We are absolutely at a disadvantage in terms of access to funding across the board. That is why I made a point earlier about the debate on commercial operators receiving public funding. I am not speaking about the subsidiaries at a local level - I am speaking about people at managing director and other levels who need to realise it will be very difficult for them to get access to public funding without undergoing some of the strictures we undergo.

The managing director and other levels need to realise that it will be very difficult for them to get access to public funding without undergoing some of the strictures we do. We publish commitments every year in terms of hours of programming. An independent consultant comes in and says whether we have met those commitments. We have regular reviews in terms of efficiencies and have had two of them this year. We publish our top presenters' fees. If others are going to access public funding, I can only assume they will have to follow some of that. I have to yet to hear senior figures in either of the two big media companies who acknowledge that this will be the case saying that in return they would like some more public funding because they are prepared to fulfil those obligations.

Mr. Brian Dalton:

Section 114 of the Broadcasting Act details exactly what RTE must do in terms of its objects such as access to a programme for people who are deaf; the breadth of genre we must have, be it drama, sport, news and current affairs, and children's programming; and the national archives. It goes on and on. There is a huge public service commitment. When one costs that, it is very significant. Cherry-picking can take place where people ask why they cannot get a bit of that. If one looks at the sheer expansiveness of section 114 and the public service obligations placed on RTE, including bringing Saorview to the public, on which RTE has been complimented, and ensuring it is free to air and a very good service, one can see this places many financial obligations on us as a service.

John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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That is one side of it. On the other side, 2FM has been referred to here as well as the definition of public service broadcasting. People on the commercial side would say that public service broadcasting is not part of 2FM and that 2FM is losing money and can be propped up by funding money from the licence payer. They are alleging that this is an unfair advantage. For example, Today FM would be a similar type of station but if Today FM was not paying its way, it would be cut adrift whereas 2FM is not cut adrift.

Mr. Noel Curran:

I am not going to sit in a position of having a licence fee, which is a privileged position that carries responsibilities, and start pointing fingers around the place at everyone else. In terms of the debate around 2FM, the Chairman is correct in that 2FM sits within RTE and RTE receives public funding. 2FM has a range of restrictions that commercial radio does not have in terms of things like minutage. Under EU and Irish legislation, we are obliged to provide a wide range of programming and 74% of the Irish public in the BAI survey - not our survey - said they wanted RTE to have entertainment programmes. I have come across this argument for a very long time and I understand it and that things are difficult for everyone.

John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I am just being devil's advocate here. What they are saying is that the funding RTE puts into 2FM from the taxpayer is covered under state aid rules but these same rules prevent them getting funding for the public service remit they produce.

Mr. Noel Curran:

The difference there is twofold. When it comes to 2FM losing money, the commercial radio sector was much more critical of 2FM when it was earning money. Over the past ten years, 2FM in total has contributed €10 million which has been invested in public service programming elsewhere. It has had a difficult few years and we want to see it turn around. One must look at 2FM within that context. I am all for people with a profit motive and people making money in the commercial sector and they can make money. When a commercial radio station is sold, shareholders benefit. The Chairman mentioned Today FM. Today FM was sold as part of a €200 million deal. I am sure those figures would not apply today but if commercial revenue increases, they are still valuable properties. We saw that in the sale in 2012. One cannot have one's cake and eat it. One cannot just say that we will have some of that public funding but will not have all those disclosures or release the top presenters' fees and if we sell and make millions, we will not pay back to the State whatever moneys we got but just distribute them among our shareholders. That is the weakness in the argument. Again, I sound very negative about commercial and I am not negative. I think commercial radio does a fantastic job. I think community radio, which is absolutely not for profit, does a terrific job as well. However, this is not a straightforward argument but a nuanced and complicated one. If someone can come forward with a plan which says that companies like Communicorp, which is one of the biggest radio operators in the UK, and UTV, which earns €20 million per year pre-tax, should get public funding without any kind of requirement or onus on them as to how that money is being spent efficiently, it is a difficult argument to make.

John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I note that the witnesses have clarified the legal issues relating to "The Saturday Night Show". We have spoken about legislation in other countries. When it first arose, we spoke about the legal advice. There was a suggestion by some of those who received payments that an apology at the beginning would have avoided any payments. In the interests of clarifying the situation, what was the process and the legal advice? Is it true an apology would have avoided payments?

Mr. Eamonn Kennedy:

The matters were negotiated over the course of about two weeks. Let us talk about what is typical, and this is no different from most cases. Someone who feels they have been defamed will look for a very extensive statement and the broadcaster will usually push back on that because they do not agree. That is what happened in this case. The thing gets negotiated. It involved two weeks of negotiation.

John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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They wanted an apology that was not acceptable to RTE?

Mr. Eamonn Kennedy:

Exactly.

Mr. Kevin Bakhurst:

The apology that was initially asked for was completely unacceptable. It named Rory O'Neill several times and we were not prepared to do that. It also went much further in editorially dismissing what had been said and we were not prepared to do that either. As Mr. Kennedy said, this is always a process of negotiation but there was no way we were ever going to put out that initially suggested apology.

John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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It is important that RTE puts on the public record what actually happened and what was demanded.

Mr. Eamonn Kennedy:

I do not feel it is appropriate to go into the details.

John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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But in general terms-----

Mr. Eamonn Kennedy:

In general terms, they wanted a very extensive apology that RTE would never have agreed to under any circumstances. These matters get settled by two sets of lawyers negotiating and one gets to a finish which one hopes brings the matter to an end. Unlike personal injury cases or breach of contract, the problem with defamation cases is that they are not popularity contests of people or ideas. Once a person raises a complaint in the way one can raise it according to the way the defamation system works, there is a system there. I am not saying it is utterly wrong. That is not the point and I have never made that point. Once someone raises a complaint within the system, one must deal with it in a rational way. The point was made earlier that if this was defended for another six or 12 months, a white flag was run up the pole at the end of it and the costs were €1 million, people in this room would take issue with it.

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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The fact is that the public perception is that RTE is on one side of the argument, whereas the witness is saying RTE was not willing to enter into an apology on Rory O'Neill's behalf, as that was not fair to him. It is very important the witness stated that, because it looked very one-sided. That was the perception.

Mr. Kevin Bakhurst:

We do not generally like to make these negotiations public but because other parties involved made some of it public, we wanted to point out the reason we could not settle immediately for the apology. It was suggested we could. We were not prepared to do that. We were also not prepared to say as part of that apology that we totally disagreed with what had been said, which was also suggested.

John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Thank you for attending the meeting and for your presentation. Thank you also for answering the questions in an up-front way. We appreciate that, as many issues have been clarified as a result. We wish you well in your work.