Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 10 June 2025
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport
Revised General Scheme of the Broadcasting (Amendment) Bill: Discussion
2:00 am
Mr. Steve Carson:
I will pick up on Deputy Brennan's question. I absolutely echo the support he cited for RTÉ Sport and the match on Saturday. I happened to be watching it in a crowd and you could have heard a pin drop towards the end. RTÉ Sport has a fantastic team. It is a very significant part of our in-house production base.
On the League of Ireland, as we referenced, we bid for the rights for that competition but were unsuccessful. Another broadcaster picked them up. We then went on to secure the rights for the FAI Cup. That is important because we want to maintain that connection to club football in Ireland, which is having a strong resurgence. I will take the Deputy's observation about camogie representation away. I will take a moment to plug our new series about football, "Hell for Leather", which started last night and is also on RTÉ Player. To reassure the Deputy on his observations, we are going through that process and are reducing the headcount this year. Inevitably, some hires come in for urgent operational needs, but every single hire is offset against how we reduce the overall net number and improve this process, including up to the leadership team, to make sure that we are managing that headcount. I assure him on that. I will also take away his other observations.