Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

This is an issue we have been raising for about 15 months, ever since Boxer DTT Limited pulled out of the tendering process. People have been warning the Minister that this fiasco was likely to happen. The proposition for DTT in Ireland was that a commercial operator would provide channels on four of six multiplexes and that RTE would provide free-to-air channels on two of the multiplexes, providing eight to ten channels. The infrastructure to facilitate all of that was to be paid for by RTE and on the back of that it would get a revenue stream from a commercial DTT operator. That process has now collapsed.

I want to ask the Minister a number of specific questions. First, I agree with him that the focus must now be to ensure that we meet our legal obligations under the targets which have been set for analogue switch-off. If that means leaving a potential commercial operator for the current time then so be it. What is the Minister's Department doing now to prepare the approximately 1 million people who receive their television service on an RTE analogue platform at the current time for the arrival of digital terrestrial television within 18 months? Some 22% of households or 32% of televisions are affected.

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