Pádraig Ó Céidigh (Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is double. I ask the Minister of State and the Minister, Deputy Bruton, to lead on this issue. If the Government extended the amount of advertising allowed to RTÉ, it could increase the revenue by between €25 million and €50 million a year. That would restructure it.

This next point is my most important one and I ask the Minister of State to impress it on the Government. I am very concerned about local radio. Local radio stations also have a public broadcasting remit within our legislation with which they must comply. We must provide them with some of the licence fee being collected, as they are not getting a penny of it. They provide a critically important public broadcasting service to me, to the Minister of State and to people in Dublin, Limerick and all over the country. We need to create some form of equity because the current set-up is anti-competitive and unfair. We should press the button on that, not next year but the year after, and give them fairness because they are seriously struggling and are working off peanuts in many cases. I hope the Minister of State actions some of the points I have made. We are all on the same page here as we all want a strong public broadcaster.

There are great people working in RTÉ. I am concerned about the staffing, and about the SMEs that provide production services and so on to RTÉ. What will happen to them? Will they lose out again? They have lost out significantly in the past. There are a few thousand of those, mainly around Dublin but also around the country.