Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 16 December 2020

Joint Committee on Media, Tourism, Arts, Culture, Sport and the Gaeltacht

Challenges facing Public Broadcasting and the broader Media Sector as a result of Covid-19: Discussion

Mr. Paul Farrell:

On that point, I would not underestimate the resistance which will be encountered from our friends in Google and Facebook. I saw Nick Clegg speak recently at an IBEC session at which he said that Facebook would pull out of Australia rather than pay levies. I have also worked in newspapers and they have suffered most at the hands of the online search engines and aggregators and social media platforms by having their content moved without any recompense. The levies will be challenging in that context, and I do not underestimate that, but levies are the way forward.