Mr. Rory Coveney:

The Senator raised a question about broader democracy. He may have noticed that we were clear in our submission that broadcasting is a cental part of our future. There is a reason for that. Broadcasting has enormous societal benefits that are baked into the public service objectives on which we are to deliver. There is the idea of many people consuming the same thing at once, whether it is a sporting event, a news event, a tragic event or a national commemoration. The concept of a media that actively seeks to bring people together as opposed to a media ecosystem which does the reverse, which can be seen in many other markets, has all sorts of consequences for the democratic system in which we all live. Broadcasting and live delivery of content, whether it is over IP or broadcasting networks, is going to be central to RTÉ's future. Even as we migrate to a fully IP infrastructure over the coming decade, live broadcasting on radio and television will continue to be essential to the whole purpose of public broadcasting without RTÉ just becoming a public service publisher pursuing a Netflix-type model. Such a model would lose many of the benefits related to mass consumption at the same time. We would not get 440,000 people listening to "Morning Ireland" or 420,000 people watching "RTÉ News: Six One". Those figures are astonishing when one thinks about all the sources of news that exist on any given day that people can access on their phones and everything else. Thankfully, we still have moments in Ireland where we come together to try to understand the world together. That is key to RTÉ's progress.