No. I am saying that the Minister talks about the coverage of the ceremonies with regard to the death of the late Pope and the election of his successor. I am saying that there might have been added to that a comment or two by our Minister for External Affairs if he had been there, but he was not there. I gather that the Vatican had been declared what we have been calling a sort of Aiken-free zone for the occasion, and properly so.
The second matter referred to in the Minister's opening statement is that the opening of the transatlantic service of Aerlinte was featured. So it was. I wonder will the Minister think of adding to that now what we heard here the other day, that the forecast with regard to the Aerlinte service was that in the first stage they were likely to lose £800,000, and I gather they have lost it. It would be well worth while recording that as an addition to what has already been done over the wireless.
The third matter was that we heard the voice of the President on the occasion of his address to the United States Congress. Again, it was well done, but it was very much later that one learned that all that oratory, poured out in the United States by the President, had been, so to speak, made up here and carried out in cold-storage in these caskets that the Dáil has heard so much about.
The Minister speaks of the Symphony Orchestra. It is one of the few matters for which I find universal acclaim and enthusiasm. The Symphony Orchestra and the Light Orchestra are both very highly thought of and, if anything could add to the stature of Radio Eireann, undoubtedly, it is the Symphony Orchestra and the Light Orchestra.
I want to come now to the television matter. I notice that in the last stage of his speech, dealing with the television matter, the Minister uses the phrase: "The whole television question will, of course, come before the House." I take that to mean that the Government, through the Minister, have not accepted one of the recommendations made by the Commission, which will be found on page 45 of the Report, at the foot of the page and over the page, where they say that the body to conduct the negotiations with proposals for this television service would be the authority which this report recommends to be set up. They set out, however, that it will take some time for legislation to be prepared and the authority to be established, and the Commission recommend that the Government should have the necessary negotiations undertaken and the contract entered into at the earliest possible moment.
We do know that an interim report was sent in and the suggestion there was made with regard to the site for a television service. That has been accepted but this booklet goes on to say that once the contract was signed it would be possible thereupon to commence the erection of the necessary transmitting stations and studios and the installation therein of the necessary equipment, an operation which should not, in the opinion of the Commission, have to await the enactment of legislation.
If that recommendation is confined to the taking over of the site and developing it for the station, nobody can object to it, more particularly as the report has been kept confidential, or at least it has not been given to members of this House or to the country. Possibly there was a good reason for taking these steps in advance and no objection can be taken to that but if, however, the recommendation means that proposals are to be considered in secret by the Government, and that they are to enter into contracts, or a contract, with one or other of the groups who have made proposals, I suggest it would be a breach of the ordinary Parliamentary procedure, and a step for which no reason has been given.
I am assuming that when the Minister says this matter will come before the House it will come before the House unprejudiced, and that there will be no arrangements previously made with contractors, except in regard to site development.
The report itself is quite interesting though it is a very irritating report in many respects. Twenty people were appointed more than a year ago to deal with certain terms of reference. One of the 20 resigned. Of the remaining 19, four signed a very forceful and, to me, a very persuasive minority report. Of the other 15 I think there are only two who signed without any reservations whatever. The rest either make reservations to the report itself or, what is more irritating and more confusing, they make reservations to a certain supplement which has been sent in confidentially to the Government and which, of course, has not been released for the information of the House. But, if one looks at page 50, where the signatures are given, there appear to be only two people who have signed without any reservation of any kind. The rest have reservations to the confidential supplement or to some part of the report itself.
When one turns to the minority report one finds that there also a confidential report was sent in by this minority four, and again that has not come before the House. I hope these confidential reports will come before the House when this matter comes eventually to be discussed. I cannot see why there should be any hesitation about giving them to members of this House. Nineteen or twenty members of the Commission know not merely what is in the report but also what is in the confidential parts of it. There are certain members of the Civil Service, attached to the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, who clearly must be aware of what is in these confidential parts. I should assume that most members of the Government and, at least, top civil servants in Government Departments know about these matters.
There has been no leakage of any of this information and I think that at least representative members from different Parties in the House might be allowed to have the same familarity with these confidential matters as, say, the various groups to whom I have referred. However, if the Government desire that these things should be kept over, and only released when the Government are coming to the point where they are making up their minds what proposal would be accepted, it may be too late to have a discussion on the matter and, if there is value in Parliamentary procedure, at least Deputies should be allowed to influence a State Department when they are approaching a matter of this type.
The report, if I might summarise it, has decided that there should be a television station and equipment in this country. They suggest or accept the suggestion that there should be five transmitting stations, and I would not take the same view as Deputy Russell has taken of this. I note that these transmitting stations allocated as they are to Dublin, Cork, Galway, Bally-shannon and Kilkenny, are meant to ensure that coverage would be given to the whole area, and there are paragraphs in the report where it is quite clear that the view of the Commission is that if there are new television amenities they should not be confined to this city, or to the Leinster area, but should be open to all citizens who have the money with which to buy the licences.
We are to have a television service. There are to be these links, and one of the important matters on which there is a great difference of opinion is whether the transmitting stations should be owned by the State, by a State body, and on that I want to express a strong view in favour of the first reservation to the report where, I think, three members of the Commission indicate they see no reason why the ownership should not be vested in either a State or semi-State body, or maybe a State Department.
It appears from reading, and giving some thought to the report, that members of the Commission themselves possibly felt the terms of reference were so narrow in one phrase that they were precluded from considering and reporting in the way the first reservation does report. However, we are to have a television amenity. There are to be these five transmitting stations, and the report recommends that they should be put into the hands of a contractor for operation. After that there is to be a programme. The programme at the beginning is to be for 30 hours per week of which 25 per cent. is to be "live" and the rest is to be tinned or canned stuff. That is what is being given. At least, that may be only the first step, but the report goes on to say they look to the time when there would not merely be 100,000 television sets in use but at least a couple of hundred thousand. At a particular cost there is to be 30 hours of television per week, four hours per week-day, and five hours on Saturday and Sunday, of which only 25 per cent is to be live and the rest recorded, tinned or canned.
The Commission points out that this is going to be very costly. I have seen no report which brought out the necessary costs—not the immediate costs—but the costs for the country if television is to be enjoyed. I have seen no report which brought out that price so well as this one does at paragraph 47 on page 19 and the gist of that is that costs will, in the ultimate result, be borne by the Irish people. They say they will be very heavy.
They start off with the capital cost of the television service which they put as between £1,000,000 and £1,250,000, but that will be a very relatively small part of the total costs involved. The average cost of £80 a set would mean a cost of £8,000,000 for 100,000 and it is possible that the numbers will grow to at least double that in six or seven years. If you double the number of sets to 200,000 then you double the total cost from £8,000,000 to £16,000,000, and the maintenance and replacement costs of the receiving sets will be a substantial sum each year. In addition, viewers may be expected to be charged with a licence fee, and the Irish purchasing public will bear the costs of advertising programmes. They do point out that this last point is apt to be overlooked, that advertisers on Irish television will pass on the costs to the consumers. There briefly is their estimate of the cost.
Let us take the number of sets at 100,000 and we find £8,000,000 will have to be paid by those of the population who desire to enjoy this amenity. The licence fee, it is recommended, will be £3 if it is to be a T.V. licence only, or £4 if it is to be a joint radio and T.V. licence. Let us take the £3. In addition they say that the operation and maintenance cost may be very heavy and finally whatever may be gained for the upkeep of T.V., by advertising, by rates charged for advertisements, may well eventually have to be found by the Irish public.
A contrast that immediately occurs to my mind is this. Here we are as a community and in our Health Acts we have declared that one-third of the population of the country is so badly off that that section of the population cannot be asked to bear any part of the medical expenses of that particular one-million group. We are so badly off as to one-third of the population that health services have to be, so to speak, put upon the rates or upon the taxpayers but that group of taxpayers cannot be expected to pay, and at the same time this Report asks us, with a warning as to costs, to engage in providing television at a cost which certainly at the very minimum will be somewhere about £9,000,000 or £10,000,000 and may go into the neighbourhood of £17,000,000 or £18,000,000.
Again, I want to relate that to what is given. What is supposed to be given is 30 hours television in the beginning, of which one quarter—say one hour per night or seven hours in a week—is to be "live" shows and the rest is to be something that will be recorded and sent in or given to us by some other country. One immediately asks is it worth it? Of course, in the end it will be for the viewers to say whether it is or not. In any event that is the programme that is suggested to us and, in order to carry that out, the Commission recommends that there should be a television authority, a body of nine people with a staff, the nine people to be remunerated. Naturally, no remuneration is mentioned but the suggestion is that it should be such as would be a reasonable return to a person for giving his time and attention away from his ordinary affairs to the television authority.
In addition to that it is suggested that there should be five advisory committees. Now, you have a television authority; you have a staff; a main executive officer, and payment for all these and five advisory committees on the subjects that are set out in one paragraph of the Report. That, as I say, all boils up to a few "live" shows for one hour per day and something in the nature of three hours in the week days, maybe four hours on Fridays or Sundays, coming from material that has been already recorded and held for transmission eventually. I do not know whether that is worthwhile. Only when we get the proposals will we be in any position to judge. I am all the time speaking subject to the reservation that I do not know the proposals. They are in the Supplement which is confidential. The views I express are, therefore, subject to substantial change when we get the proposals.
I am also speaking subject to this reservation. I want to draw attention to what I call the very forceful and persuasive language of the four who reported in a minority. The main point upon which the chief body of the Commission and a certain small group differ is in respect of the ownership of the transmitting station and the transmitter. There is Reservation No. 1 signed by six people and they accept the whole of the Report with one special reservation. I take it they feel that their colleagues on the Commission were really at one with them that television should be on the basis of a public service but that the main body of the Report of those who were on the Commission felt they were precluded from reporting favourably on that because of the terms of reference.
If that is so, the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs or the Government are not bound by those reservations if it does emerge to their view—and this is as I read it myself—that the Commission would have definitely reported in favour of a public service but that they were precluded from doing so by the terms of reference. There is no limitation on the Minister or the Government when they come to consider this matter.
I want to refer to what Reservation No. 1 says. In a brief one and a half pages, they say they accept the main conclusions but refer to paragraph 61. They do not agree with the conclusions in paragraph 61, that in existing circumstances an Irish television service can only be provided as a private enterprise financed mainly by revenue from advertisements. This reservation continues:
The Commission has accepted that: "If the necessary capital was available there is little or no doubt that television should, if possible, be provided on the basis of a public service." In this conclusion we fully concur. We are of opinion that from the outset the television authority should provide and own the essential transmitting stations and links. We believe that only within such a framework can the national, cultural and industrial interests of the nation be adequately safeguarded.
They have a few more paragraphs but they are attempting to meet the difficulty which apparently their colleagues felt in regard to the terms of reference. They say they have very little doubt about the necessary capital being raised. I may quote from their paragraph 4:
The television authority should, in our opinion, have little difficulty in raising the necessary capital within the State, either from private or commercial sources or both. Moreover, the licence revenue recommended by the Commission would in itself be sufficient security to cover the interest and sinking fund of the capital required.
That is quite clear.
If one turns to paragraph 61 I feel one can see here that the majority of the Commission feel they are being pushed in a direction by the terms of reference. They say in paragraph 61:
It would be possible to establish a television service for Ireland in one or other of the following ways.
The first is as a public service financed from public funds and licence fees. The second is as a private enterprise financed mainly by revenue from advertisements, and the third is a kind of midway course, "in special circumstances as a special service financed by licence fees and advertisements but with no assistance from the Exchequer"—with the emphasis on "no assistance from the Exchequer".
I take it to mean that they are remembering—and remembering too well—that the terms of reference given to them were that on the basis that no charge should fall on the Exchequer, either on capital or current account, they were to recommend whether a television service was practicable or not. They go on to say:
If the necessary capital was available there is little or no doubt that television should, if possible, be provided on the basis of a public service.
Then they say:
A television service on basis (a) above is, however, not possible within the terms of reference of the Commission.
Even though it is precluded from their consideration certainly the Minister and the Government are not precluded from considering it when they come to give it their attention.
Paragraph 61 continues:
A proposal was made to the Commission that a television service could, and should, be provided on basis (c) above within the terms of reference.
That is where they spoke of "in special circumstances, as a public service financed by licence fees and advertisements, but with no assistance from the Exchequer." On that they say:
This proposal involved submitting information to the Commission on a confidential basis, and consequently it was decided to deal with details of this proposal in the Supplement to this Report. For the reasons therein given——
we do not know these
——the Commission is not satisfied that this proposal would ensure a satisfactory service. In the existing circumstance an Irish television service can, therefore, only be provided on basis (b) above.
I do not think that I am interpreting the Commission incorrectly when I say that they had thought of an approach to this matter on three lines. The first was ruled out by their terms of reference. The third was not immediately ruled out but it devolved on the receipt of confidential information from the Department to the Commission and on that information they were not satisfied that proposal C could operate and give satisfaction and for that reason they opted for proposal B. That is not very satisfactory for people who have to discuss and debate this matter. I do not know why proposal A was ruled out except that it was through a very narrow reading of the terms of reference. Why proposal C was scrapped we do not know and will not know until we see, if we ever do see, that confidential information. In any case the Commission was driven to recommend that T.V. should be on the basis of private enterprise financed widely by revenue from advertising.
They say that in paragraph 62. They say:—
"If, therefore, Ireland is to have a television service, and under the existing circumstances the Commission does not accept that Ireland can afford to be without its own television service, it follows that such a service must for the present be provided by private enterprise, notwithstanding the considerable difficulties that are attendant on the establishment of a commercial service by private enterprise."
Immediately after coming to the conclusion that we must proceed on the basis of private enterprise the Commission give a preliminary warning when they say:
"Notwithstanding the considerable difficulties that are attendant on the establishment of a commercial service by private enterprise."
They follow that up by saying:
"In the circumstances, created by the facts that the B.B.C. programme is received in Ireland to the extent that it is, and that in addition an I.T.A. programme will probably be broadcast from Northern Ireland by the end of the present year, it is of the utmost importance that an Irish television service of a high standard should be established as quickly as possible, and then should be operated successfully. To this end it is necessary that the operating organisations should be capable of making prompt decisions, of carrying such decisions quickly into effect, and of taking calculated business risks associated with such an enterprise."
Paragraph 64 repeats the warning already given. It says:
"While the Commission at this stage recommends the establishment of a television service on the basis of private enterprise, it further recommends that if and when the circumstances favour a change-over to the basis of public service, this should be done unless by that time experience has shown that the present misgivings associated with a system based on private enterprise are unfounded."
The Commission are driven to recommend something which they consider, in ordinary circumstances, would be unacceptable to them. They say: "Let us have a change over made unless experience shows that the present misgivings associated with a system based on private enterprise are proved unfounded." They continue along that line in paragraph 65 when they say:
"In the selection of a private operating organisation to hold the Irish television concession care has to be taken to examine the character, standing and background of the individual or individuals comprising such organisation so as to ensure as far as possible, first, that such organisation is unlikely to broadcast television in any way detrimental to the best interests of the nation, the State or any of its citizens, and second, and more important, that he or they are likely to endeavour to use television to the advantage of those interests. It has also to be remembered that an Irish television service requires a special knowledge of local conditions and attitudes, and that there are many disadvantages in remote control and absentee ownership."
I have not found in any report of any commission where anybody advised anything along certain lines that they have used so many phrases condemnatory of the thing that they have recommended. The most they can say is that we should take care to examine the character, standing and background of the people comprising the organisation so as to ensure that they are unlikely to broadcast anything that would be injurious to the best interests of the nation and that we should ensure also that they should use their powers to the best advantage of those interests.
Having read that, I do not see how anybody can come to any other conclusion but that the ownership from the start should be vested in the State, although whether it should be a State sponsored body or not is a matter which we can discuss on another occasion. We have a Commission report in which they have recommended something which they do not like and in which they are at pains to point out that they do not like what they are being forced to recommend. I hope the Minister will keep that in mind.
There are quite a number of interesting points in this report but it is not necessary to look at more than the preliminary points I have mentioned. It is quite clear that an Irish television service cannot be run on the basis of licence fees. Licence fees in that respect would be prohibitive and the amount of the fees would prevent the service ever getting started. For that reason the Commission finds it necessary to recommend that the service should be financed by advertising. The minority report refers to that in great length but there is a certain part of the recommendation of the Commission itself which is of value.
The only thing which I find inconsistent is this—at one point the Commission says that there ought to be power to take the contract from the group that has got it if experience showed that such group was not operated in the way we should like or in the best interests of the country. What is to happen? The Commission says that there should be the right to abrogate the contract. It is all very well to say that you can take the contract away from the people who have it but that is not likely to be productive of any very good results. Where would you be likely to get someone to follow on the heels of a predecessor when the predecessor has had his rights summarily and recently removed from him?
It often happens, particularly in Government contracts, where the right is given to enter on the contractor's plant if things are not being carried out properly. Anybody with experience of administration will know that that cannot be done so smoothly. At the end of the report the Commission goes on to say that in order to prevent certain things happening, and in order to ensure that certain things might arise there ought to be power to approach the High Court in order to get a person to operate in a particular way. The Commission that was wide awake enough to see that the forfeiture of a contract was not likely to produce good results and to say that there should be an approach to the Courts of Justice in certain eventualities is something of an incongruity.
I do not know what was in the confidential reports made to the Commission and I still have to speak of the minority report. Any reading I have done in this matter makes me favour the Commission's report, subject to the first reservation. In other words, let this service be established; let us have this amenity. Having first of all counted the cost, the people can decide to go ahead; but let the original station and the transmitters be owned or under the control of a Department of State from the start. I believe it has been said that that is the only way in which proper control can be maintained. I agree with every word of the first reservation.
There are a few other matters one might speak of. In regard to the Television Council, I do not know whether nine people are required. The proposal for a Council with nine people with a chief executive officer, a whole staff and five advisory committees seems to me to be getting far too complicated, particularly when at the end there is to be a service of 30 hours of television of which one hour per day per week will be "live" and the rest will be something already done somewhere else and sent over here in a can or in some other form.
Having said that, one must pay attention to this very forceful minority report. It is a lengthy report, but not a word is wasted in it. At the end they make a recommendation, which again is contained in the confidential part of this minority report and it is not possible for us to follow on that. My reading of it is that the minority say: "You will not get a television service of any value, certainly you will not get one that redounds to the credit of the nation, if you accept any of the proposals we have seen before us." They say at the end if we must have the revenue to get a better service, it cannot be got under these proposals; and they recommend that there should be some investigation of evidence submitted to the Commission as to something called the International Commission Sound Broadcasting.
I must confess I never heard these four words together until I read this report. I am completely out of my depth and I do not know what they mean. But those who have been on the Commission had something brought before their notice. At least four of them signed a recommendation, the end of which founds upon an investigation into the possible acquisition of more revenue by this means. What they say at the end is this. It cuts to the root of the whole matter. While agreeing with the majority of the Commission that the Irish people will pay in the end for everything after the capital cost of the sets and their maintenance and the cost of equipping and maintaining a station, they say in paragraph 22, page 64 of the Report:
"A consideration of the costing for Irish programmes (excluding engineering costs) proposed by three applicant groups for the Irish television concession, who are wholly or partly engaged in British commercial television at this time, is revealing. Their proposed programme costs ranged from just under £140 per hour to £190, per hour (maximum)."
Paragraph 23 institutes a comparison:
"The cost of B.B.C. programmes per hour (exclusive of engineering and other costs) was £1,538 in 1956-57 and £1,730 per hour in 1957-58. In short, the B.B.C. expenditure on programming per hour last year was nine times the amount which those applicants proposed to spend on Irish television programmes..."
They pointed out that the cost per hour rose in one year by approximately the total amount per hour which these applicants proposed to spend on Irish television programmes. One cannot at the moment pursue that to see whether it is a proper conclusion or not. But at least they state figures which have to be answered. But if it be the case—I do not know whether these three proposals are typical and represent the average of the proposals named—and a service is founded on an estimated programme cost of the mean between £150 and £190 and if the B.B.C. runs to ten times that, the conclusion reached by the minority is coercive that we shall get a very poor service.
The phrase they use in paragraph 24 is:
The figures mentioned in paragraph 22 above suggest the conclusion that no British contractor considers Irish commercial television viable except on the basis that its programmes are second hand to a preponderant degree, and are presented by the associated British company at little or no cost to the contractor operating the Irish service.
Then they speak of an interim minority report which refers to that danger.
Their report strikes me as being very forcibly worded and is one that to me is very persuasive. They say that the Irish station will become a British regional station, and a very poor type of British regional station. Talk about running a thing on a shoestring, clearly if they are right, that will be the situation.
May I come back to what the Television Commission have reported? They say that the cost to the country will be £80 a set, for 100,000 sets. £8 million. The capital cost of the station is very small relatively, £1,000,000 to £1,500,000. In addition to the capital cost of the sets, there is a maintenance charge of £3 per set. In addition to that, whatever advertisements are put over the radio and paid for, the cost of these advertisements will eventually be charged up to the Irish public. For all that we shall get television for 30 hours a week, one hour of which is "live" and the other hours will be of programmes estimated to cost £150 to £190 while the B.B.C. costs are ten times that.
I think the minority conclusions are correct. They say Northern Ireland is a British regional station. They talk about the efforts made to get special features in Wales and Scotland, but they very definitely make the case that we shall get a very poor service and that certainly it will not be an Irish service. All the remarks they quote from their colleagues are rendered very futile—at least, they sound very futile when one considers this report.
Turning again to the minority report, paragraph 26 says:
The prospect, under these circumstances, of programmes of Irish origination which are "largely a matter of finance" becoming a large proportion of the programme material would thus appear to be entirely tenuous; so also would the sale of telerecorded Irish programmes abroad. And the prospect of supplying the first necessity, of Irish programmes "of high standard at least equal to that of the best British programmes" would be as remote as the prospect of providing good quality programmes in Irish.
Towards the end they say there is an expanding world market for T.V. film making and distribution, but they feel we would be precluded from entering into that if we have third-rate prerecorded British programmes at minimum cost to the contractor put across on the people here.
They forestall an objection by stating in Paragraph 11, having spoken about the difficulty of getting a characteristically Irish station and entertainment:
It is sometimes believed that the Television Authority can guard against such difficulties by an adequate system of controls and codes. In effect, however, the power of the television programme-contractor is all-important.
They quote the Director General of Britain's Independent Television Authority, Sir Robert Fraser, as saying:—
"You can lay down codes until you are blue in the face, but in the end it's the taste and common sense of the producer that counts."
We are going to put ourselves at the mercy of the producer who will build his programme cost on £150 per hour —one-ninth of the B.B.C. cost. I consider that minority report devastating in a sense. The figures may be wrong. We should be told if they are wrong. Eventually, I suppose, when we see the confidential report we shall be able to consider the arguments and conclude whether or not they are sound.
They work out figures then with which I shall not weary the House. They say that the revenue to be expected from advertising and licences, or both, which the Commission estimate at about £680,000 a year, will be quite insufficient to permit programme costs of the proper type—programme costs "to which other running costs of at least £300,000 per annum must be added". They say that:—
The only other source of revenue suggested to the Commission for the financing of high quality television programmes, which would enable an Irish television service to meet strong competition, was International Commercial Sound Broadcasting.
They say they have investigated all that. They say certain evidence put before them led them to the conclusion that, along that road, more revenue can be found and then better programmes can be given without any extra cost to the Irish advertiser or by way of any very heavy cost of a licence.
There are a few minor points. The Commission said that, when considering the Authority—that is, the nine people—it might allay possible political objections if the nine were chosen entirely by the Government. The Minister knows, as well as I do, that political objections are not merely possible but are certain to be made. I want to end on one note: I hope that when we come to discuss this matter finally we shall not find that any contract has been made and that the concession has already been given away. More particularly, I hope it will not be found to have been given to one of the proposers, a man very closely associated with the demand for subscriptions for the Fianna Fáil Party.
