Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal North East, Sinn Fein)
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823. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources if he will examine the possibility of providing online services such as RTÉ Player to Irish citizens in Northern Ireland. [38384/13]

Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)
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RTÉ is an independent national public service broadcaster whose remit and obligations are set out in Section 114 of the Broadcasting Act 2009.Section 98 provides that the company shall be independent in the pursuance of these objects, subject to the requirements of the Act, and as such I, as Minister, have no function in the management of RTÉ’s day to day affairs, including in relation to the organisation's management of the availability of RTÉ Player. That said, however, RTÉ has assured me that it endeavours to make as many programmes as possible available on the RTÉ Player to users within both Ireland and Northern Ireland. In some cases, however, rights restrictions require that only users within Ireland can view certain programmes and access is consequently restricted outside the jurisdiction of Ireland using a technology called geo-blocking for those programmes in which RTÉ does not own the international rights.