Ms Celene Craig:

I will address the Senator's last point first. In terms of the various resources the BAI provides, whether the website for our sustainability network, for instance, training and development or through some of our sectoral work, we are working towards building expertise within the Irish broadcasters whereby if they do not have the information, they will know where to source it and how to build their own expertise in this area. There is nothing I can specifically say in terms of putting a requirement on broadcasters to address carbon impacts.

As our activities grow, and their expertise and confidence in this area grows, we expect to see greater challenging of people. The ability to challenge when budgets are presented, for example, might involve looking at what some of the performance indicators might be, such as carbon impacts. If they have enough knowledge, that positions them to be able to challenge. If they are not in a position to build that expertise, they should know what type of expertise they can build into their content and programming in order to be in a position to challenge or debate more thoroughly on some of these points.

We can say that biodiversity was in the scope of the recent climate action round. We hope to announce that soon but unfortunately I am not in a position at this juncture to give more detail on it. However, it was certainly within the scope of the recent round.

The Senator made an important point on creativity. We hope to illustrate through this focused round that a focus on climate change is not just coming through in news and current affairs content. We want to demonstrate that there is also a creative means to deliver this information and, more importantly, to engage audiences, aid their understanding and get their support for the change that is needed at every level.

The international context is never far from the minds of broadcasters when they are positioning a piece. It is important to recognise that in serving their own audience - regardless of whether it is a national, local or community audience - it is about understanding the wider international context, the wider science and the wider knowledge that is there and trying to make it relevant for their audience. That is often about bringing the issues down to the local issues in a particular context, taking the factors that are in play in the international context and identifying what elements are most relevant to the audience we serve. That is a well-honed skill that our players in the Irish broadcasting sector have fine-tuned over many years.