Mr. Mathew Horsman:

My company, Mediatique, with Ms Helen Boaden, was asked to do this report back in November. We spent several months talking across the market, to many different people in orchestral music and classical music and most, if not all, of the stakeholders with some skin in this particular game concerning the future of orchestral music in Ireland. As we started the process and went through it, we were aware that the review was coming at a time of financial challenge for public service broadcasting. RTÉ, throughout this period, and for some time before, had been facing funding pressures with the licence fee as well as commercial revenue weakness. That was exacerbated by the structural challenges faced by media companies. I refer to the new entrant challengers such as Amazon, Facebook, Apple, all of the things that people talk about.

When we set out to do this work, we also understood two other important contextual issues. One was that there were no countries or markets in the world where orchestral music is not publicly funded. There is no commercial funding model for orchestral music - there is always a public funding element. We were also aware, however, as we went through the international benchmarking, that Ireland was very different from many markets. It had only one form of public funding, that is the licence fee, and the only full time orchestras in Ireland were both operated by RTÉ. That was the background for the report.

The question we were asked to answer was not whether one should shut orchestras or merge them. The question was about whether we sustain the provision of orchestral music in Ireland and that was what we set out to answer. We did international benchmarking but I will not go through the detail because it is in the pack. We looked at a number of sources of evidence, including stakeholder interviews and data from surveys asking people what they thought. There was widespread support for orchestral music, even among those who do not necessarily consume it. People also believed there should be an element of public funding, so there was a good measure of support in the survey. We also did much financial modelling and checking across the market for market sizing and context for all this. While we were completing the recommendations, which I will finish on, it was very clear to us that the challenge for RTÉ was huge.

Between 2008 and 2016, the last year for which we had data at the time of the report, income decreased by 24%. The orchestras were actually quite protected in that period, being down by 11% and so less than the overall hit RTÉ took. From looking at the situation, however, it was difficult to see how RTÉ could continue to fund the current level of provision, given the demands on the licence fee and commercial revenue, let alone increase the orchestras' traditional touring and educational activities back to historic levels. We did think those traditional touring and educational activities were very important in respect of the overall situation of orchestral music in Ireland.

We concluded the orchestras were so important that they were more important than RTÉ. Even though our job was to answer a question put to us by RTÉ, our answer became more complicated because RTÉ did not have, within itself, the full answer. We felt that answer should, therefore, be a statement that both orchestras should be safeguarded, they should be brought back up to their traditional strength and they should again tour and do educational programmes but that only the concert orchestra should remain within the control and direct operation of RTÉ as a traditional public service orchestra. The National Symphony Orchestra, living up to its name, would be a true national symphony orchestra either as a cultural institution in its own right or through the evolving status of the National Concert Hall. It was a natural partner through its operations and facilities.

We did not come down on one side or the other. That was something for the players and stakeholders to decide. We felt that something that would give the NSO independence from RTÉ would safeguard its future. We also thought that would give both orchestras the chance to have a renewed creative vision and to work together. I will underline, as my last comment here, that we had some suggested funding outcomes, but that is, again, for the stakeholders to decide. We suggested there needs to be an ongoing contribution from RTÉ, even to the NSO, in the form of what we called the broadcasting fee. That was because it was important that the RTÉ continues to support the orchestra. There would, however, be a shortfall if we were to get the kind of outcome we wanted, and that we think is desirable in Ireland, of returning to historical levels. The Government would be asked to step in to meet that shortfall. Our recommendation was that would occur and I was pleased to see, around the time the report was published, that the Government agreed that these were interesting recommendations and worth taking on board.