To go about designating an event as free to air, there is quite a process. The Minister for Communications firstly has to consult in the designation process with the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism.

And then he must prepare and publish the list of events which are set for designation.

Then he must invite public comments on the intended designation. After all of that has been done he must then take into account certain issues and those issues have to be considered individually.

Four criteria are laid out. Does the event itself have a special general resonance in the relevant member state of significance to those who ordinarily follow the sport concerned?

Is it of generally recognised distinct cultural importance in the member state concerned, particularly as a catalyst of its cultural identity? Does it involve a national team in a major national tournament?

And has the event traditionally been broadcast on free television and commanded large television audiences in the member state concerned?

So they are the four issues and in order for the event to qualify for designation it must fulfil at least two of those four conditions and in this event it is my understanding that it did not. If you look at them very carefully you can see why.

But there are other issues.

The attorney general was asked for his advice and he was very clear. His view was that we are not on legally sound ground in making designation. There was little or no doubt that we were open to legal sanction by Sky or the European Tour or both. In any event the European Commission would have been brought into it and advised. Even if it had passed that robust examination, there was still the threat of legal action, but I stress that threat never arose and nobody mentioned going to the European Commission.

I was consulted by the Minister for Communications and this was my opinion on the matter - if we were to turn around now and say we were to designate the Ryder Cup then the European Tour might feel that we have now changed the rules of the game, that'd we'd shifted the goalposts after the game had started. That a spoken understanding was now being gone back on and that we were now changing for populist or political reason.

And the European Tour has been a really good friend of Ireland and have brought some great tournaments here.

And they might feel it was a slap in the face for them and if they did feel like that I had to consider was it a possibility, or even a probability, that other large sporting organisations might feel wary when doing business with Ireland? Would this militate in the future against attracting events from other sporting organisations?

I was worried about our international reputation among sporting bodies.

I am aware that the Taoiseach made comments about having the event as free to air but it must be said that they were also meant as a sports fan. He, just like myself, as a supporter would have liked it on RTE but the matter hadn't been given any in-depth consideration at the time he was talking and there wasn't the attorney general's advice on the table. And it also isn't true that this is a government caving in to a corporation.

Everyone has to look at the common good, be it from a legal perspective or an economic, social and cultural perspective. If you look from any of these perspectives, the common good pushes us towards not designating the Ryder Cup as free to air.

But RTE is an organisation in its own right, it has people with considerable business acumen and it's open to them to go now to Sky and sit down and make arrangements for the transmission of the Ryder Cup live on RTE. I have no doubt that they have the capacity to do that. Already they have arrangements with Sky to show highlights and I really don't see why they can't go on and do this. I say that because Sky is an enormous international organisation whereas RTE by comparison is a small organisation with a relatively small population as a market so I am confident that RTE can come to an arrangement at the time.