Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I thank the witnesses for the presentations. This is one of the greatest collective challenges we face as a nation. I am interested to hear what RTÉ has learned from its leveraging its responsibility to inform, entertain and educate in this area. It is making a difference. What has RTÉ learned from that process? Does it track social media and the responses to what it puts up?

There is no doubt but that part of a populist political critique at the moment is resistance to the change required to respond to the climate challenge. In every country in which there is a populist regime or growing populism, this is attacked as part of identity politics and grievance politics. How does RTÉ look at balancing debate around these things? If it is presenting something on the need to respond and create a pathway by which people can understand and see what action they can take, does RTÉ feel an obligation to have people on who offer the opposite view in terms of balance? I can sympathise with what has been said about advertising. What is the limit of RTÉ's sense of obligation to be compliant within its mandate to inform, educate and entertain? Are there ads that RTÉ is consistently blocking? Is there an in and an out or does it look to other sources such as advertising standards or Government legislation to decide where those lines should be drawn?

In persuading people to come on board with a transformation agenda, the notion of circularity is much more understandable. We all grew up with the idea that you use material carefully, you did not throw things away if they could be repaired and you husbanded resources.

This idea of looking all along your supply chain and trying to identify what is doing the environmental damage is more intuitively understood by people than saying we are the worse in terms of emissions or some measure that does not mean much to people's lives. Has RTÉ considered looking at some of the themes around circularity such as how we build, repair, restore, looking at fast fashion, and obviously at these patterns of rapid throwaway that have developed in our more consumerist world? Does it see that as part of its mandate in bringing a focus to bear on these challenges?