 Fel cwmhwyl ei ddweud, ddweud eich gweithio'r rindun yma yn gyfynodol a'r dyfodol, ddweud eu gweithio'r amddangosol yma yma. Mae'r hyn yn ddweud yma yn ddweud eich gweithio'r amddangosol. Yn ystod, rydyn ni wedi'i gweithio i Dublin ar broslwch Cymysgwyr Krwys, ac yn Cork, David Putnam, Cymysgwyr Krwys yn ystod gweithio i gweithio ar y cyfnod, ac rydyn ni wedi cael ei gweithio i gweithio i gweithio i gweithio i gweithio i gweithio i gweithio, i Smydechri, i ddymarfodwyd, i pengyrch. Cymysgwyr Krwys yn ei ffordd y firmddiannig, ar fod sydd yn cymhag, i gweithio i gweithio i gwasanaeth rydyn ni. A'r ddiwedig a'r dylun hynny i ni ar sefydliadau lawer oedd yn cael ei gweithio i gweithio'i gweithio i gweithio. As citizens, as consumers, as voters, we need a free, diverse media, not beholden to a single sector of society, to large commercial concerns, or to a single political party. Whether we choose to admit it or not for both politicians and those we serve, media play a central and critical role in conveying information, parsing outcomes and passing judgement. They create the written and recorded account of what happens, and in a very practical sense, they create the reality within which we exist and act and we depend on an informed citizenry to have a discount, a built-in discount factor when exaggeration, distortion and misrepresentation sometimes occur. Because of this, the nature and character of media matters too. Its ability to speak truth to power to challenge authority is one of those slender columns that sustain democracy. If that capacity is reduced in any way, then we are all the poorer for it. If media is fettered either by the interests of the owners by fear of authority or by simple group think, then our democracy is worse off. This centrality is reflected in the report of the high-level group on media freedom and pluralism to which the chairman has referred. It's always refreshing to read an exploration, ab initio, of media policy, and all the more so when done on a European scale and done so well. The breadth of the recommendations made in the report in and of itself conveys the expansive nature of media's role. For me, however, the key outcome from the report is around the deeper structural trends emerging from the impact of technological change and the consequent shifts in the economics of media. The nature of the dialectic between market and technology for media at the moment is such that long-established relativities are shifting. This is implications at a general EU level, at member state level, and particularly for smaller member states. At the highest level, we are seeing a deep structural reformation of traditional media players with a move away from long-standing, vertically integrated model of media provision where a single company owned the editorial process, the advertising sales mechanism, and the means of distribution. Contemporary media tins instead towards a more disaggregated and internet-focused model. More recently, the rise of social media and the advent of highly flexible and tailored internet-based advertising threatened the basic advertising income of all media, national and local, print and broadcast. Accepted scales of operation for a newspaper, a television station or for a radio station are being rendered redundant by the emergence of a vast crop of new, small and infinitely flexible media players on the one hand, and by the slow growth of a small number of supra national media operators on the other, often characterized by cross media ownership. Some of these concerns have been with us for decades, while others are much more recent arrivals. Underlying this are some worrying trends for newspapers in particular. A report published earlier this week, for example in the United States, showed that the value of print ads displayed has fallen from 45 billion to 19 billion since 2003, while online ads have only grown from 1.2 billion to 3.3 billion over the same period. The value of mobile advertising is growing very rapidly on the other hand, but much of that value flows to a small number of technology companies and flowing out of national economies and in many cases indeed out of the European economy. Clearly the stream of revenues upon which media depends is being redirected by the market. This is the future whether we like it or not. The internet and converged media is not about to be uninvented. At a member state level it is generally safe to say that our respect for democracy and for freedom is shared even though there are some market cultural differences across the European Union. A function no doubt of the long and often troubled journey that many states have made towards freedom. Critically technology has often worked in favour of democracy, the arrival of the printing press being the obvious case in point, and there are aspects of the present revolution in media that have similar positive characteristics at a member state level, not least in terms of the rise of inclusive and dynamic social media, but there are real challenges too. On the one hand the rise of online media brings huge benefits, but on the other it also both fractures and disaggregates audiences and ensures that the scale and degree of editorial competence that traditionally existed in newspapers cannot be easily replicated. This is an issue in all markets regardless of scale. Equally issues arise at the other end of the spectrum that of the multinational converged media operators. There is a natural tendency for merger and acquisitions activity in mature businesses, for them to agglomerate to achieve greater economies of scale. This is generally good for consumers in terms of providing choice and competitiveness and getting access to services that may not otherwise be provided. Media is no different in that regard. There is no difficulty with the concept of media companies being owned by large corporations so long as there are adequate checks and balances. There are difficulties on the other hand when media ownership and control becomes the play thing of a small group of like-minded individuals, not because there is anything necessarily wrong with what these people may believe or choose to reflect in their newspaper titles or on their television channels, but rather because of the fact that this crowds out other media because diversity suffers. For many years member states have sought to ensure some degree of plurality and diversity in their domestic media through controls and mergers and acquisitions, admittedly with varying degrees of success. Even this notional degree of control appears to be under threat, however. The collapse in advertising revenue in some technologies together with the commercial opportunities afforded by technologies like connected TV means that the long rise of media businesses with feet in multiple jurisdictions appears to be gaining pace. In and of itself this isn't an issue. We all understand and accept that economic, technical and political changes are a fact of life. We accept too that while different member states sometimes operate in very difficult political and cultural contexts, cultural diffusion by shared media is not just a fact of life, it is of profound benefit. But upwards agglomeration of media has an immediate impact for member states in terms of keeping a degree of plurality at an indigenous level. The issue is no longer about simple questions of plurality or even freedom, but about commercial survival for entire sectors of domestic media and about ensuring that national political systems and national news stories receive sufficient and diverse coverage. Some countries, Ireland being one of them, have a longer history of this type of interaction than most. International media actors in both television and print, including those operating directly from the United Kingdom, continue to aggressively compete for market share with domestic players. But with the benefit of far larger budgets for program making and for investments in new technology. As a small nation operating within several interlocking spheres of media influence for centuries, we have developed a well understood and articulated policy framework, but it is one that is being fundamentally challenged by the emerging realities. In particular, changes in the television marketplace has long since allowed outside broadcasters to target advertising at Irish consumers without any significant presence in the country. Preserving a degree of domestic plurality is going to become increasingly difficult as supranational media operators move towards internet based distribution systems that allow them much greater flexibility and reach in terms of what they offer customers. These processes and they are very much still in process are exciting and dynamic, but they hold potential difficulties as well as potential gain. Historically then, this is an important moment. The development of a free and pluralistic media, both in terms of the technology and the legal and economic frameworks, has proceeded stepwise with the development of democracy and in simpler terms it is impossible to conceive of a modern democracy without a free and diverse press. The two are generally regarded as being intrinsically linked. Regardless of whether democracy brought forth the modern media or vice versa, the question now arises as to whether the character of our democracy can be sustained in this emerging media ecosystem. The simple answer is that we don't know. We won't know until we have a clearer idea of where this is going, where, if anywhere, it will end and what the business models of the future will look like. All of this raises a simple practical question. Should the state or the European Union now intervene somehow to preserve media? Should we seek to hold up one particular model or type of media operator as exemplar and seek to support that model in all sectors to the detriment of others? My answer to this question is no. Not just because of the acute difficulties associated with governments taking control of large pieces of their media ecosystem. The primary reason is that to try to preserve media in some sort of legislative aspect would be to remove one of the primary reasons for media's assertiveness and sometimes downright belligerence. It is also important to recognise that in Europe, characterised for the very most part by a clear separation between government and the press, there are some profound limitations to action. You cannot proactively force a diverse media into being. While states can theoretically step in to prevent concentration of media, it remains the case that there are very few positive steps available and that much of what can be done is difficult and potentially dangerous. In many ways media is a bit like that delicate flower, it is easily trampled even by the well intentioned. This is not to say that for a moment that I'm suggesting that all will be for the best in the best of all possible worlds but rather that the media ecosystem that we are faced with in Europe is the result of a long series of compromises and in many cases careful and sensitive decision making by governments. States across the EU have had a long complex and variably articulated relationship with the media sectors. Clearly any interface or policy intervention with media have to be handled with extreme sensitivity both for the general reasons that I've already discussed and for country specific reasons. However it must be recognised that individual member states and the EU institutions have long had constructive involvement in media at a number of different levels. Not alone does every member state have a public service broadcaster or broadcasters but the EU has collectively had a series of directives governing trans frontier television with the most recent the 2007 audiovisual media services directive also dealing with aspects of video on demand. One of the instruments that remains available and which retains immense value is the fact that member states can still support due to the space made in EU law national public service broadcasters. This is thanks in no small part to protocol 29 of the EU treaties which recognises that each member states public service broadcaster aims to meet the democratic social and cultural needs of that society in which it operates and which also speaks of the need to preserve media pluralism. We can conceive of or construct media in a number of different ways as a sector of the economy, as a means of communication, as a means of entertainment but it is also something much more fundamental. It is central to the freedoms that we hold as core values of our democracy. The freedom to speak, to be heard and to hear. This is reflected in the Irish constitution and in the charter of fundamental rights of the EU. But having said that, media is changing. It is far too soon to proclaim what the in-state of this process will be but we already know that it will challenge and quite possibly undermine aspects that currently underpin the character of our democracy. Moreover, while there are real and exciting opportunities opened up by new media these have limitations and bring their own very new challenges. To begin with, we have a digital divide which still tends to exclude the old, the less well-off, the remote, the less media literate. How will social media serve them? In the words of William Gibson, the future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed. In addition we have pressing questions around net neutrality and emerging questions around the editorial powers conferred on search functions and other interactive media. And we still do not fully understand the reach and persuasiveness of social media for instance in an extreme case. Could we really rely on a diverse but balkanised new media as a pluralistic counterweight against an increasingly simplistic but hugely well-resourced mass media? I'm sure it would make a positive contribution but as a realistic and reliable alternative for the great mass of the people. I'm not sure. In dealing with all this a connected Europe is critical and is only going to become more so. Europe is not just more economically interconnected than ever before it is more connected as a media space. This occurs on an editorial basis as a story here is after all increasingly likely to be related to a story elsewhere but also because of the fact that a single European market means that larger players operate across member states. This is a good thing but states still need to ensure that plurality persists both across the union and within each member state. In the future we may have to look to new measures to safeguard this but before that we need to know a lot more about what's happening. The work of the Fundamental Rights Agency is critical and I note with interest the suggestion in the high level group report that this agency makes a more expansive role in monitoring media plurality across Europe. Equally the recently published CMPF policy report from the European University Institute is a very useful contribution to the debate and I'm sure that Professor Park is presentation later this morning will be useful for all. In both cases however it is clear that more research is needed within member states and at an EU level before we can definitively say that we know what is happening particularly with regard to media consumption. Moreover in the medium term we may need to consider introducing measures into EU competition law to allow public value tests akin to those already in place in a great many member states for domestic media merger approval to be applied to mergers that are subject to approval at European Commission level. But the question is what should we do now? In the first instance it falls to member states to ensure that their domestic provisions to safeguard plurality remain appropriate and technologically adept. Here we have a bill in this country we have a bill in preparation to do exactly that to incorporate the Schrinan principles into national law. We will therefore be strengthening the criteria to be applied when assessing a proposed media merger to include its likely effect on plurality which includes both diversity of ownership and diversity of content. The undesirability of allowing any one individual or undertaking to hold significant interests within a sector or across different sections of the media national broadcasters so crucial in giving voice to our different differing cultures and different political structures are likely to become more important over time. However their economic position is almost universally difficult and sustaining a critical mass is going to be difficult in many member states. But it must be preserved in a way that is sensitive to commercial broadcasters but preserved nonetheless. But there is more to be done. Online media needs to be promoted and encouraged not only to enable their continued existence but to encourage them to flourish, to speak truth to power, to challenge authority, to act as truly independent voices. This will require a stable, comprehensive and accommodating regulatory framework incorporating data protection, intellectual property and defamation. The framework must be designed with modern media in mind but must incorporate all the democratic protections that we take for granted today. The media of the future will be diverse in terms of resources, in terms of reach and most critically it will mainly be online. It will be global in reach but capable of almost infinite specialisation as it will harness communities, virtual or otherwise in the delivery of their own news. That much we can tell already but there is much that we cannot yet tell. Democracies, states must remain vigilant so our media ecosystem remains plural and diverse. We owe that much to future generations. Thank you very much.