Mr. Michael O'Keeffe:

I will take those questions. I thank Senator Warfield. The first question was on recruitment and urgency. I am glad the Senator mentioned urgency because we absolutely agree with him on it. I welcome the fact that this pre-legislative scrutiny is being done now. There is a target to have it completed by the summer. The target is also to have the legislation enacted by the end of the year. That is very positive. I urge the committee members, as legislators, to ensure this happens. There is an imperative. The audiovisual media services directive is in place since 2019 so I believe the end of 2021 is a target. I agree strongly with the Senator on the urgency.

On the business case and recruitment, we have engaged with the Department. I saw the proceedings of this committee's meeting with Mr. Ciarán Shanley and Ms Triona Quill a couple of weeks ago. We met them yesterday. We have had preliminary discussions on the business case and what is involved in it. Ms Quill, when she was here a couple of weeks ago, talked about a fairly exponential rise in the number of staff members. We have about 40 people in the BAI. Clearly, many more will be needed in the media commission. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has a role and will be involved. The Department will engage with the commission. We have agreed, with the Department, to set up regular meetings. We are talking about meeting every three to four weeks to update and plan. There will be a need to start a recruitment process as early as is practicable. How it will work out in practice will have to be negotiated through the Department ofTourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. There is a commitment on the Department's side and ours to work with those concerned.

The Senator made a point on the tech companies. If the tech companies were happy with this, he might be more concerned. In our submission, we set out all the activities in this area in which we have been engaged, including through the European Commission and the European regulatory group that we chaired. We have chaired several groups involved in this so our knowledge in this area is very strong. We have engaged with the tech companies and look forward to continuing to do so. We agree with the Senator on the concept of urgency and its importance in making progress.

Let me address the Senator's other two questions. On the question on women, we are meeting Ms Coogan Byrne. The gender team, which involves my colleagues Ms Stephanie Comey and Ms Deborah Molloy Bergin, has set up a meeting with Ms Coogan Byrne, to be held next week on 14 May. The team has had positive engagement with her in the recent past. There is certainly an issue that needs to be addressed. We have a good track record on this. We had a similar situation regarding women in creative roles in the independent production sector. We introduced criteria for the sound and vision fund. That has seen a fairly significant rise in writers and directors, although maybe less so with respect to directors of photography. This is another of the areas we have examined. The rise is a result of policies we introduced with the scheme. There is no question but that there is an issue that needs to be addressed. It has not been raised with us in the past. It was raised by Ms Coogan Byrne last autumn for the first time. We have been engaging. There is a need to engage with the commercial radio sector and, indeed, the public broadcaster, including its radio section. We intend to come up with some proposals and move on this. We did this over a couple of years with the independent production sector and it worked very well.

I want to make a final point, on community media, because it is important. We have launched a consultation on a new community media policy and have done a lot of work in this area. We can send some of the material on to Senator Warfield in that regard.