Mr. Declan McLoughlin:

The Senator is quite right in what he says about increased engagement. This comes back to the earlier question from the Cathaoirleach. The impetus for the climate action course we ran this year came from broadcasters. We have a steering group which oversees the work of the network and we had a taster one-hour piece on climate literacy in 2021. When it was looking at the action plan for 2022, the group said that it wanted more of this. The area of knowledge, understanding and awareness of climate and of climate literacy is something the group identified as a weakness among many in that we need to know more and to be able to push back against people who are looking to delay action. That was very important to the group. We had approximately 85 participants on that course over the five weeks who ranged from the national broadcaster, Virgin Media and the community local radio sector; it was also opened up to the screen-produced production sector. There was very much a strong engagement and that also fits in with what the network was going to do in 2022. All of the members said that they wanted to focus on climate, which they said was a real issue for them.

There are real challenges financially, which I believe the Senator has touched upon. The BAI can and has supported broadcasters via the various departments such as the sound and vision and media schemes but these are very much engaged in trying to find ways to leverage all of their resources to try to address these issues. We have those who have much bigger resources and then we have the community sector, which has perhaps more flexible schedules, which allows it to do things which are more adventurous and wide-ranging. There are many different strengths which these broadcasters can bring to bear. Finances are important as is sustainability in a financial sense, but there is a very strong appetite to engage from the base they are at in the way that they can.