Ms Susan Kirby:

We listened to all of the contributors and the evidence given to the committee in the same way as everybody did. We are aware that due to fixed costs and other challenges it has, RTÉ is signalling its intent to reach the 25% minimum but, to paraphrase, it is looking for flexibility in the timeframe. This is enormously challenging for our sector to hear and to accept, especially when we take into account the fact there is a wider issue of core pillars of funding not coming into the sector. For RTÉ to be successful in achieving its own strategy, 25% should be maintained as the legislative requirement for it to invest in the independent production sector.

Not having this 25% investment is already having an impact. Irish drama is enormously underserved. I was going to make the point to Deputy Malcolm Byrne that another feature of our sector is that it is a complex global sector. If we look at what we perceive as Irish drama, in a number of cases how it is constructed is what we call cocktail funding. It requires the input of our national broadcaster as the first investor and the producer then takes it to the market. Without the initial backing by our broadcaster nine times out of ten it will be unsuccessful at market. It is critical that our broadcaster can invest in our producers, so they can then leverage and bring in additional funding.

I was struck by some of the figures in RTÉ's annual report which spoke about co-production funding brought in by producers. This is in the region of approximately €20 million. This is the inflection point. A producer can get a relatively small investment from RTÉ and then attract additional investment. From our perspective, it is key that RTÉ meets the 25%. I am giving drama as an example but across all of the genres of our members' productions some of them are underserved, children's programming being another one. There is a real issue if we look forward five, ten or 15 years. When children's programming is entirely given to us by large streamers with large budgets, coming from a different jurisdiction and a different cultural nuance, we can expect, and it will happen, that in five, ten or 15 years our children will be utterly influenced by this, without an Irish influence. I referenced earlier that we all hear a mid-Atlantic accent, which is an accent from a country that does not exist.