Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 6 December 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action

The Role of the Media and Communications in Actioning Climate Change: Discussion

Photo of Timmy DooleyTimmy Dooley (Fianna Fail)
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I welcome Ms Craig her team from the BAI and I thank her for the presentation. It is heartening to see the work the BAI has done and the progress that has been made. I wish that other sectors of our society could take the same credit.

I am interested to understand the BAI's initial reaction to the response from the broadcasters within the BAI's remit - local, regional and national broadcasters - and then radio versus television. Has there been a good uptake in their engagement with the process? Of course, it follows that when one dangles the carrot of money, one will get attention: he who pays the piper and all of that. What is Ms Craig's sense of that? Are there some who cannot cover the topic because of their own financial constraints, which we regularly hear about anyway but that is another debate for another committee in relation to the licence fee and broadcasting charge. Does Ms Craig believe, in the context of the financial pressure traditional broadcasters are under, that this limits their capacity to be as proactive in this area as they might like to be? Perhaps Ms Craig will also comment, or she may not, on whether this is another reason we should be looking at the wider and more progressive approach to capturing a broadcasting charge, or a charge associated with a residence rather than the piece of technology that a person has? That is the first aspect I would like to get Ms Craig's sense of.

Has the BAI looked at, or has it any insight into, what other countries are doing on this? What best practices are emerging or is it too early to comment on that? What could assist Ireland and guide us from a policymakers' perspective as to what we might be able to do to help the BAI, or that which will follow on from the BAI, in the work ahead?