Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

It is important that the Minister recognise that even though he is talking about DTT being made available from October 2010 onwards, the reality is that nobody will be accessing it from October. We do not even have set top boxes. We do not know what they will look like, how much they will cost, who will make them, who will provide them or who will install them. There is total uncertainty around how we can access digital television. Even though RTE has to have the infrastructure and capacity to broadcast digital terrestrial television from October to, potentially, 90% of the population, none of the 1 million or so people who will need to have DTT installed in their homes, ready to go by the time analogue switch-off happens, will have it in October. Let us not pretend that they will. At best, they will potentially have it in the first quarter of next year. Would the Minister agree with me on that?

My final question concerns the cost of all of this. Is the Minister satisfied that RTE has already spent €40 million putting in place an infrastructure which it thought it would get a revenue stream from? The Minister can correct me if I am wrong, but I understand that it has a commitment to spend another €30 million. How does the Minister propose that be funded?

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