Mr. Harry Browne:

That is a very good question and I think that while RTE is not entirely immune to commercial considerations, it clearly is a dual-funded broadcaster and it gets considerable financing from advertising. Some of those programmes would have got sponsorship from building societies and things like that so there would have been some direct agenda, yes, an agenda that matched up advertising with content, in those areas, which were non-news areas, non-current affairs areas. I am not suggesting that RTE invented that agenda particularly for commercial purposes. As the Deputy suggests, it was part of a wider cultural phenomenon and one that arose directly from the economic interests of the institutions that were trying to encourage people to get on that ladder, keep buying, get on that ladder, keep buying, soft landing, etc.