Mr. Michael O'Keeffe:

I thank Professor Travers. I will provide a brief introduction and then go into some of the detail. We launched the current statement of strategy in February. It covers a three-year period and we are developing multi-annual work plans. I want to discuss the five strategic themes that give us the focus for our work. They are: promoting diversity and plurality; achieving excellence in accountability; communicating and influencing; empowering audiences; and enhancing innovation and sectoral sustainability. There is a series of strategic objectives and outcomes within the document under each of these themes.

I will start with promoting diversity and plurality. There are number of headings under this theme. The first involves our broadcasting services, which capture much of the licensing work we do. We are about to embark on a significant piece of research which will examine an environmental and economic analysis of the Irish marketplace to determine the potential, if any, for additional services or changes in the nature of the services we currently operate. We have ongoing licensing plans and are running a plan for community radio. We completed a fairly significant plan for commercial radio in the past number of years. We license a range of services. In addition to local and community radio stations, with which the committee will be familiar, we also have content provision contracts for services which are carried on cable and satellite platforms. They come under section 71. An interesting dimension to this is that, under the audiovisual media services, AVMS, directive, there is the potential for services which are licensed in the UK but which are currently seeking to base their operations in other jurisdictions as a result of Brexit to consider locating in this jurisdiction in light of the similarities in the regulatory regimes and language. It may be an issue for us in the coming years.

On media plurality, we have supplied a copy of the Reuters report to which Professor Travers referred to the committee. Some of the findings are quite interesting. Professor Travers did not mention the rise ofthe.journal.ie to the top position in terms of people accessing news. Its profile has steadily grown over a three-year period and it has now reached the pinnacle, which is an interesting development. Under this heading, we will also carry out a three-year review for the Minister on changes in plurality across the period. The report will be published next year, I understand.

We are due to review the ownership and control policy around Irish broadcast services. The other element is media merger evaluations, which come on request from the Minister. We do not initiate media merger evaluations. Under the Competition Act we will do that work. Under this heading, we will also examine the increased diversity in society and are placing a particular emphasis on gender and language in the current period. One of the issues under the heading of the diversity and culturally relevant content is the sound and vision scheme, to which the Chairman referred.

The next area involves two strands. One is external and will involve the compliance of broadcasters. This covers their compliance with commitments they have given in their contracts and the compliance and commitments RTE and TG4 will give in respect of their services. The other is internal and we have a robust record system which we need to develop further. We have high standards in environmental governance and social practice, such as financial management, a code of corporate governance and initiatives in support of the environment. We will develop those further over the period.

Our third area is communicating and influencing. The major aspect here is the revision, at European level, of the AVMS directive. That revision will, to some extent, change the nature of regulation. In particular, it will bring some dimension of regulation to non-traditional, non-linear on-demand services such as Netflix, which will be subject to some form of regulation under this revision. YouTube and other video-sharing platforms will also be subject to some elements of regulation. We are playing a very active role at European level in conjunction with our colleagues in the Department on the revision. I understand the committee will be covering the new broadcasting legislation next week so I will not go into it except to say we will be playing an active role with the Department and other regulatory bodies on that. Finally under this heading is our communications strategy, which is around how we deal with public affairs and liaise and engage with the public. In the past 12 months, we brought forward a new website designed to be more user-friendly in allowing the public to access what we do.

The fourth area relates to empowering audiences. Professor Travers spoke about media literacy activities. We have the first meeting of the network today. We are also looking at developing codes and rules here. These include: the general commercial communications code; a review of the access rules, which are the rules on subtitling and sign language; and the introduction of the short news reporting code of practice whereby broadcasters take extracts of major events. Interestingly, it was the first time in all my experience of dealing with codes that there was absolute unanimity. No one disagreed with any of the provisions we had in that. It would be great if that were the case more often. The other aspect of this area with which members will be familiar is the complaints process. We have tried in the recent past to make it a bit more user-friendly so that it is easier for people to make complaints in respect of broadcasting matters. A final element of this theme is the participation of the public in media. We see that in particular in the communities sector where we seek to get more involvement from people there.

Our fifth and final theme comprises two strands. One is the funding of broadcasters. I will not go into too much detail on that, particularly as we are committed to attending the committee's forum on broadcasting. We also made a presentation to the committee on the matter last November. We look forward to Friday and what will emerge from that session. One of the big pieces of work for us is the five-year review of public funding of both RTE and TG4. We have started that process and hope to report to the Minister in the first quarter of next year. The final element of that is linked back to the first slide I showed on the broadcasting services strategy. The review process will look at the models we have in radio at present because of funding challenges and how sustainable services are. That will look at the rules and regulations applying to the local and commercial radio sectors, in particular, where these challenges exist.

The second element of the theme is creativity and innovation. We have, as Professor Travers mentioned, the Canadian joint fund, which is one of our sound and vision ancillary schemes. We are meeting some other people to develop a separate one. There are four projects in train as a result of the fund established by ourselves and the Canadians this time last year. Creative Ireland is a recently established interdepartmental group to which we are contributing through our representative on it. There is a whole range of things under sectoral learning and development. We provide a great deal of funding and other supports to the various networks such as the Community Radio Forum of Ireland, CRAOL, the Independent Broadcasters of Ireland, IBI, Learning Waves and others. We also have a number of innovation schemes. We have a training scheme for people who are involved in writing creative drama for which we provide funding. We also have a media research funding scheme to which we have allocated €50,000 for research projects. We do those over the course of a number of years and they cover different topics.

That was a whistlestop tour of what we do and we are happy to answer any questions members have.