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.