Ms Celene Craig:

Perhaps I will deal first with the issue raised by the Senator about viability. There is no doubt that since 2009, the Irish broadcasting sector has had a lot of challenges. There was a huge migration of advertising revenue, which is the key source of income for almost all broadcasters, to the online platforms. This has been challenging and has increased over time. Following the economic crash, from 2009 to the 2012 or 2013 period we were starting to see some small shoots of recovery but Covid has impacted very badly on radio broadcasters. Our own reports seem to indicate that the local broadcasters, as opposed to regional or national broadcasters, were a little bit more badly hit and they had a slightly slower recovery. This has been ongoing for almost three years now. We are monitoring it very closely. The Minister recently asked the BAI to undertake a report in this regard around overall viability.

In our experience, it is fair to say that the level of funding available to any broadcasting entity is likely to be reflected in the outputs. For the most part, the basis of almost all broadcasters' appeal to audiences, and therefore their overall viability, is to speak to them on the subject matters and issues of the day that are important to them and matter to them. When we consider the response we have had, for example to focused rounds for local radio or commercial radio during Covid, and again more recently with our climate round, we are really seeing a meaningful engagement and a real means for them to bring in some expertise, and to learn and grow their own expertise in-house. There is no doubt this is linked to having the staff available to do that, and to afford them the types of training opportunities that can be delivered by some of the industry networks. All of these pieces are quite important.

Generally, there are challenges for the ongoing support for local newsrooms, which are very vital and at the heart of everything local broadcasters do. The recovery tends to bottom out and plateau for a while. There has never been a recovery to where it was pre-2009, and that environment has become more constrained. It is a more challenging media environment. It is a way more competitive media environment. Those challenges are there.