Local radio was established mainly to reflect the views of the community and provide a service for it. Before the introduction of local radio, a service was provided by RTE where an outside broadcasting unit would go to a town or area for a week, giving people the opportunity to design, produce and publicise their own programmes. That was the foundation of local radio, although RTE might feel that to some extent it was helping to put itself out of business. At that time there was a suggestion that RTE might also act as a service provider to those stations. There were arguments for and against this and the resources at RTE's disposal, the archive it built up over the years and its expertise in the area were taken into account. One of the strong arguments against the idea was that involving RTE might result in a return to a monopoly – we might only see copies of what was already available at national level – and that we would be defeating the purpose of local radio.