Alex White (Dublin South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

That is right. In fairness to Senator Mulcahy, and in the spirit of debating the matter with him, I do not wish to sound like I am being remotely dismissive of any of the issues being raised but a temporary reduction in funding means a temporary reduction in services. It affects staff, jobs, programmes and services, what goes and for how long it should go. It means all of those things. We just need to look at the implications of any of those proposals.

I agree with the points Senator Ó Clochartaigh made on TG4 and Raidió na Gaeltachta. There is a direct nexus between the Minister and TG4 in terms of the funding but not between the Minister and Raidió na Gaeltachta, which is funded by RTE from within the limits of the funding available to it.

We discussed media merger guidelines in the legislation at considerable length last year when I published the guidelines. The guidelines are just the guidelines; they follow the legislation. As Senator Whelan pointed out, the critical decision of the Oireachtas in respect of how to approach the issue was made in the legislation, which was in July 2014. The guidelines simply follow that. As to the question of how the guidelines will work, in time they can work, and they will be seen to work.It is the first time any Government has addressed media ownership, concentration and media mergers. I am confident these guidelines will work and we must give them time to do so. Does the Acting Chairman wish me to wrap up?