Mr. Mathew Horsman:

I will make a quick observation on it. Facebook is indeed considering being a content provider for the next stage in its evolution. Hulu, of which the committee might have heard and which is, I suppose, kind of another US version of Netflix, is coming to the UK as a next step and possibly at the same time to Ireland, as is often the case. My observation is twofold. First, the trend is for so-called skinny bundles of content rather than fat bundles so the pay TV operators are also under some pressure. They are having to think about re-tiering and changing their propositions a little in order to meet the consumer resistance - sorry, the people's resistance - to paying additional funds for content. As a result, there is a little pressure going on even among the pay TV operators. The issue that comes back with Facebook and Google and the entry of Hulu, Amazon and all these other players into the market is that this will only get worse and more and more complicated for RTE. Right now, the joint 800,000 or 900,000 homes that take a pay TV operator service from the current offering bodies - Virgin, Sky and Eir - are important today and will be for some years to come. At the same time, there is the amplifying effect of these new entrants also coming in, demanding their RTE content. This issue of access by any player in the pay TV environment to these RTE services must be sorted out or else there will not be a sustainable model for RTE and other public service broadcasters. What is the point in having an intervention of the current size if the content cannot be found? That is the other point on this: it must be findable and it must be sustained.