Before the recess, when I asked the Taoiseach to set out the up-to-date position in regard to the national broadband plan, he told me a decision was imminent.

The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment held sittings to discuss the matter and produced a report highlighting quite a bit of duplication. How much attention will the Taoiseach pay to that report and those deliberations? What is the up-to-date position regarding the national broadband plan and any contract? Will he bring it back to the Dáil for discussion and debate in advance of signing?

The position regarding the broadband contract is that the Government has chosen a preferred bidder. Work is now ongoing with that preferred bidder to move to a position where contracts can be signed. We are assessing the report of the Oireachtas committee. I have made it clear that while I will look at the committee's recommendations, I will not consider restarting the whole process, as some have advocated in the recommendations they have made. It would not be fair to rural Ireland to ask people to wait a further five years for another tender process to be carried out. I am proceeding with all haste to try to ensure that all the due diligence that the Deputy would rightly expect me to undertake is undertaken in order that I am in a position to recommend to Government the signing of a contract.

The Joint Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment will host an international conference here on disinformation and fake news on 6 and 7 November, which we look forward to. This issue is troubling countries across the world as democracies are under real threat. Clearly, one of the responses to this is a strong media that can tell the difference between what is fake and what is real and tell our people with real clarity, honesty and independence what is happening in the world. In that context, this Government's throttling of RTÉ, with the ongoing decline in its funding model, and the Government's refusal to accept the recommendations our committee set for the proper funding of RTÉ and other Irish media are deeply worrying. We now possibly face the closure of RTÉ's studio in Cork, the closure of Lyric FM or the sale of more RTÉ land as it continues to sell capital assets just to cover current expenditure. When will the Government change its position of trying to kill this sector of the media-----

I thank the Deputy. His time is up.

-----and instead start building it up, which is what we need to do to protect our whole democratic system?

I think the Deputy is misleading the House. The reality is that the Government has been restoring funding to RTÉ. Last year it provided, I think, €10 million of additional funding to RTÉ as well as additional money to TG4. We believe strongly in the need for public service broadcasting and the importance of broadcasting, be it provided by public bodies or the private sector, and there are many excellent examples of public service delivery in the private sector. The Government established a working group following the report of the Oireachtas committee and I have acted on all the recommendations of that working group. We will put collection of the licence fee out to tender to reduce the rate of evasion and will move in due course to a model that is independent of the particular device a person has. The current model is linked exclusively to ownership of a television. We are acting on the recommendations. RTÉ is looking at the more structural changes that are happening and the Deputy cannot be blind to the fact that there are huge structural changes. If we want to see public service broadcasting delivered to a younger audience, we have to change the structures through which it is delivered. That is the work RTÉ is examining: how it can meet the needs of a changing environment for broadcasters.