Noel Dempsey (Meath, Fianna Fail)

Whether the establishment of the national multiplexes will happen simultaneously or sequentially, is a matter for the BCI. My preferred option is for the BCI to run the competition for all three national multiplexes simultaneously, as it would bring coherence to the process. Hopefully, there will be more than three consortia competing in the process. However, I believe that even before that stage is reached, there may be much competition among the various consortia to get the best channel combinations for their proposed multiplexes.

The Good Friday Agreement referred specifically to TG4. The station is available in Northern Ireland and its transmitter on the Divis Mountain was switched on some time ago. RTE 1 and RTE 2 are available in Border areas by overspill only, as are UTV and BBC. It is not a matter of political will or agreement in making these channels available on either side of the Irish Sea or North and South. Serious questions concerning copyright have given rise to difficulties. If RTE were to transmit to the UK, obviously its copyright fees would increase substantially. There have been discussions between the Taoiseach and the Minister for Foreign Affairs with their UK counterparts in working out an arrangement in this regard.

The introduction of DTT will assist transmission of the various channels. If a consortia can convince the BBC to be broadcast on its multiplex, everyone in Ireland will be guaranteed to receive it. Likewise for RTE in Northern Ireland. There is a commercial interest in this. The switch-off of analogue transmission will end the overspill of BBC, HTV and UTV into this jurisdiction. There is, however, an audience for these channels, of which those consortia setting up multiplexes will be only be too conscious. In turn, they will want their multiplexes to carry these channels.

I do not believe it has reached the level of amending the BBC's charter. The copyright aspect is the more difficult one.