Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

The nature of these codes is that there is an authority that applies them. Where there are routine and flagrant breaches, it would take a certain decision. I am sure it would have ways and means of dealing with such cases.

The proposed Irish film channel will also run popular and commercially successful movies which will be typically Irish. This concept came from the Irish Film Board which recognised the large store of brilliantly crafted Irish films that will attract an Irish audience. In many of these cases, the film was not commercially successful because it did not have, say, a distribution agreement. The film will be shown on the channel which will not be commercial and not carry advertising. As well as the benefit of not influencing editing decisions, such a set-up will be easier to sell to the industry. Rather than having a film languishing in the Irish Film Board's archive, it has proposed this outlet. The channel could also broadcast, say, a French film at a certain time in the morning which schools could use. Another time slot could be used for a particular age group for a movie they might not see on other channels. One can do all sorts of things so long as it is cheap. One of the principles of this type of channel in this new digital platform is not to break the budget because it will not be big. There will not be the annual row with the mandarins, as one Senator said, because the nature of what we will be trying to do is to use what is already easily and freely available.