Ms Tríona Quill:

I thank the committee for the invitation to participate in this meeting and for its work thus far in conducting pre-legislative scrutiny of the online safety and media regulation Bill. I hope today's engagement will be of further assistance.

On 18 May, the Government decided to integrate the Broadcasting (Amendment) Bill 2019 into the proposed online safety and media regulation Bill, with the addition of three further heads. I apologise for the delay in communicating the intention of the Government in this regard and for any interruption it may have caused to the work of the committee. The heads of the 2019 Bill were subject to pre-legislative scrutiny by the relevant Oireachtas joint committee in 2017 and its report was laid before the Oireachtas on 8 March 2018.

It is important to note that the integration of the Bills will entail no substantial policy changes regarding the provisions of the 2019 Bill. The majority of the substantive provisions of the 2019 Bill, that is, sections 4 to 10, inclusive, will simply be folded into the online safety and media regulation Bill. Sections 1, 2 and 11 will not be carried over, as these are technical provisions that already exist in the online safety and media regulation Bill.

The policy intentions behind section 3 will be carried over through the draft section based on head 40 of the general scheme of the online safety and media regulation Bill, given that both concern industry levies. These policy intentions are, first, that the broadcasting regulation functions of the media commission may be part-funded from TV licence moneys and, second, that all community broadcasters will be completely exempt from the industry levy. This is the only significant difference from the 2019 Bill, which had instead provided that community broadcasters would be exempt from paying the industry levy only if they fell below an income threshold of €250,000.

Two of the additional heads were drafted to be Committee Stage amendments to the 2019 Bill in order to remove the requirement for RTÉ to operate Aertel, which is outdated, and to remove the hourly limits for advertising minutage on commercial radio stations while retaining an overall limit of 15% of daily broadcasting time.

This was called for by the independent commercial sector and will offer greater flexibility. The third head relates to the prominence of public service content. This head transposes one of the optional provisions of the revised audiovisual media services directive, AVMSD, namely Article 7A. It is intended to ensure that public service content and channels are easily findable and discoverable for Irish audiences as technology changes. To conclude, I reiterate my hope that today’s meeting will assist in the committee’s scrutiny. I look forward to answering its questions.