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.