Before I moved to report progress I had been impressing upon the Minister the problem of interference in the area that I represent. I had endeavoured also to tackle the question of a radio programme. It is as yet too early to gauge whether or not the formation of the new board will be a success.
I certainly wish it success and would like to see the idea bring forth the fruit that the Minister hopes it will. There is a good deal of common sense in the approach of Deputy Brennan regarding the personnel of the board. It will be necessary to have people of varied and divergent views on it, in order to get the fullest value from it.
I would like the Minister, if he has the information, to indicate to us whether his Department has been able to get any popular slant on what is wanted in Radio Éireann programmes. We have the vexed question of the extent to which we can use the radio for the propagation of our language and popularisation of our native and traditional music. I subscribe to the idea that to make our station distinctive it is necessary to have a strong flavour of the Irish language and an equally strong flavour of the Irish musical tradition. I am not a person who would advocate the exclusion of other interests in an unreasonable way. Where we wish emphatically to develop a consciousness of our own significance and individual culture, the medium of our radio station must be of considerable import. It might be well for the Minister to have that particular angle thoroughly investigated. Naturally, there are people who feel that the programmes are not Irish enough, while there are some people who put forward the view that there is too much Irish and too much of the traditional aspect about the station. I would like the Minister to ensure that when an arrangement has been arrived at as to the extent to which the time will be used for the benefit of the language or the popularisation of traditional Irish music, that time will be used to best possible advantage to forward the revival of the language and the music.
I would like to ensure that we get the very best type of artist. That inevitably leads to the question that unless adequate remuneration is offered to artists of the best standing they will not come forward. In particular, whether we are dealing with traditional Irish music and singing or programmes in the Irish language, there should be a premium put, if necessary on the payment of these artists to ensure that we get the very best possible in that sphere. Otherwise, we are not doing full justice to both the language and the cultural background in it and in Irish music.
We come, then, to that vexed problem which is causing a good deal of agitation, the question of the rapidly increasing number of foreign artists—instrumentalists, in the main— who are coming into the Radio Éireann Symphony Orchestra. I am a great believer in quality in an orchestra, but we must approach this in a rational way and try to equate quality and employment. Unless the quality is of a unique distinction and of a unique value, it can hardly justify the exclusion of an Irish artist of reasonable standard. We should not replace him by a foreign artist whose standard and technique, though it may be slightly better, is not of such superiority as to warrant his being described as a specialist. I know this is a difficult problem.
I know there are certain facets of musical education in which we have shown a tremendously strong national capacity, and that there are other facets, particularly in the string and wind instruments, in which we have not proved ourselves of the same calibre that we have been able to prove ourselves, as suggested by Deputy Dockrell, in the pianoforte exercises. You come back to the problem of where the division line lies. I know it is a vexed problem, and I am not going to try to make it any more difficult for the Minister. I suggest to him, in all earnestness, that where an Irish artist has to be sacrificed for a foreign artist, to improve the general quality and tone of the orchestra, he should do that type of replacement for the shortest possible period, and in the meantime he should use his good offices to ensure that there will be available teachers to enable those Irish artists to replace the foreign ones.
I am not sufficiently intimate with the problem to be able to say whether the Minister has been justified in letting go the number of Irish artists who have gone. Even conceding that, I would like to hear whether he has been able to make arrangements for qualified teachers to enable any person so displaced to improve his standard, so as to be able to compete to get his position back in that orchestra in the immediate future. We have fallen into the mistake too often of bringing over foreign experts for various purposes. They come initially with the idea of training Irish personnel in a particular field, but we ultimately lose sight of that idea and find ourselves ending by the expert becoming a permanent feature. The Minister should strive, to the best of his ability, while keeping the standard of the orchestra as high as possible, to ensure that, in the very near future, he may put the orchestra on the air with the same standard but composed exclusively of Irish personnel. I can understand the Minister's difficulties and I am not going to press him. I feel that if the Minister gives the House and, through the House, the country an assurance that this is a transitory period for the orchestra in which he is endeavouring to build up in class, quality and technique Irishmen at home to replace any of the foreigners who have come in he will allay a lot of worry.
With regard to broadcasting in general, there are features of Radio Éireann which have an infinitely greater appeal than others. That, I suppose, is inevitable but I would suggest to the Minister that one feature in particular—that of Question Time upon which I have questioned him in the Dáil and which was of tremend-our popularity—should be revived. It created tremendous interest when it became more or less a roving feature that went from area to area. Many times it was staged in conjunction with concerts for local charitable purposes throughout the country.
It became in itself a tremendously popular feature for the radio listener. The type of competition it led to was much appreciated in the areas in which it was held. It was a pity to find popular features, which were due to the initiative and effort of people thinking behind the scenes in Radio Éireann, dying out. I would press the Minister, if I can, to get more and more features of the type of newcomers competitions with a musical content.
The Minister has indicated that he is going to increase the cost of our wireless licences. If he is going to do that I suggest it will make available extra money that can go into small prize funds to encourage latent talent in the country. We suffer from one thing in regard to our radio programmes. I think the Minister will agree that we have not been able to get an individualistic Irish programme. It does not matter whether it is Anglo-Irish in the sense that the artists are going to sing songs of an Anglo-Irish nature or play instruments that are not traditionally Irish. I feel that we have never succeeded in getting that type of fresh, youthful kind of clean talent that one associates with the newcomer and the fledgling. We have not been able to get that type of programme across in Radio Éireann but it has been a remarkably successful feature of other radio stations.
Even though we may be limited in many ways in regard to finance in connection with our general radio programme, we have a lot of hidden talent that could be unearthed by way of small, attractive competitions of the nature to which I have referred. Such competitions would give us freshness and would be of inestimable appeal.
I am not at all anxious to enter into the controversy as to whether the music is too heavy or too light, whether we should have more symphonies and chamber music or whether there should be a development towards the top twenty tunes of the dance bands. That is a problem that provides a headache for the Minister's Department. Where you have universal interest you have a diversity of taste that it is impossible to satisfy and you can only meet the problem on the best possible basis.
I think we could have a slightly more rural bias in regard to our programmes. We are up against a problem which has become more severe in recent years, the problem of rural depopulation. There is no doubt but with the advent of present weather conditions the radio has become the centrepiece of the family in rural Ireland during the long evenings. We could, if the Minister thought fit, lean a bit towards the type of programme that has a significant appeal for rural Ireland.
There is one type of programme that could be considered by the Minister's new board, a varied type of instruction for the farming community, not of the professorial type but of the informative kind of fireside chat. This type of programme could deal with certain fertilisers and certain agricultural machinery that might aid the farmer in his harvesting. It should feature problems immediately germane to the farmer's own countryside.
The type of talk I have in mind is not that of a learned gentleman giving volumes of statistical information or endeavouring to state the facts seratim; rather is it the type of talk where the problem is discussed in a way familiar to the Irish farmer. In it would be discussed the pros and cons of one type of barley as against another, and of one brand of oats as against another. This should be featured in a simple, conversational way. It might be of immense value. There is a rapidly growing consciousness in rural Ireland among the farming community that there are new tricks and new grades of grain that can be of considerable advantage to it. If the Minister could have these matters discussed in an informal way on the radio, he would perform a tremendously valuable service to the community, particularly the agricultural community.
In general, the Minister and his Department are not making a bad job of running Radio Éireann at all but there are facets that merit our condemnation and criticism at times. The Minister would do more justice to himself and to his Department if he explained some of the highly technical difficulties and some of the various wavelength and waveband complications over which he has no control and which tend to cause a good deal of disturbance to listeners throughout the country.
I think it is a particular disappointment that Radio Éireann are not going to branch out into some television effort. There are a number of people in this country who are trying out television sets. They are getting mixed and varied receptions, the type of reception that could be vastly improved by any kind of a station at home. I hope the Minister may be able to indicate to the House that the question of non-entry into the television field is purely of temporary duration, that his Department are at the exploratory stage in regard to the prospects and possibilities of that particular facet of radio entertainment and that we may in the future look forward to that development. If we could put across from Ireland, through Radio Éireann, Irish culture, Irish dramatic art at its best and what is the grandest sight of all, young Irish boys and girls dancing Irish dances, there would be nothing more advantageous to the country than television.
It is too early, as I said, to know whether the Minister's experiment with regard to control of the station will be a success. I think it is the duty of the House to give it every chance of being a success and to wish the Minister luck in the selection of the personnel of the board. It is also the duty of the House to give the board an opportunity of doing their job to the best of their ability and to reserve our criticism until such time as criticism is warranted. I wish them luck. Any improvement in the general scheme of control of our radio station and in the general scheme of our programmes will be more than welcomed by listeners. I conclude by saying that we feel it our duty to give them every chance to be a success and to offer no adverse criticism until such time as they, by their actions, have merited it.
