Amendments Nos. 1 and 2 are being discussed together.
Broadcasting Authority Bill, 1959 [Seanad]—Committee Stage (Resumed).
Debate resumed on the following amendment:—
Before section 8 to insert a new section as follows:—
"(1) A member of the Authority who, on becoming a member, has any financial interest in any company or concern which has sought or seeks to make or with which the Authority has proposed or proposes to make any contract or financial arrangement shall, immediately on becoming a member, divest himself of such interest.
(2) A member of the Authority who has any financial interest in any company or concern which during his membership seeks to make with the Authority or with which the Authority proposes to make, any contract or financial arrangement, shall, immediately upon such seeking to make or proposing to make, either—
(i) divest himself of such interest, or
(ii) resign his membership of the Authority."—(Deputy Dr. Browne.)
I have moved this amendment because I think there is a basic weakness in Section 8 as it stands and this amendment would, I think, help to strengthen and improve the section. The intention of the amendment is to try to preserve certain standards and practices concerning the financial transactions involved in straightforward operations, on the one hand, and, on the other, to try to deal with what I think might arise as a result of possibly divided loyalties on the part of members of the board should they have interests outside those of the primary function of the Authority, namely, the establishment of a television service.
I have in mind the possibility that should the board include a member, or members, whose financial interests outside are associated with the advertising business, there is a very strong possibility that there would be the divided loyalty to which I refer and, consequently, the advertising side of the function of the television Authority might predominate. The idea then, and I am sure it is the idea the Minister has in mind, of trying to give the best possible service to the public might become subordinate in importance to the other considerations of the member, or members, of the board.
I have considerable sympathy with the Minister's dilemma because it is quite clear that, with the best will in the world, it will be very hard indeed to establish a worthwhile television service here. I agree with Deputy Sweetman that the operative consideration will be the great disparity between the amount of money we can afford to spend and the amount spent on other services available to certain sections of our people. Examining the services available to me and knowing the appallingly low level and the triviality of the vast majority of the programmes, it seems to me that if we apply the test and find that that is the best that can be done with £1,800 per hour, then the Minister's job is an unenviable one when he seeks to provide a good service under a limitation of £600 for the "live" and £200 for the "canned" programme.
I can see that the Minister has a very difficult problem indeed with his limited finances. In order to provide a first-class service, he is driven into being very careful in relation to the considerations I have mentioned—this very important question of public accountability on the part of State corporations in relation to financial transactions, that these corporations should be amenable to some form of scrutiny here, some form of public scrutiny, or that they be so circumscribed by legislative proposals as to make it practically impossible for them to misuse the funds the Minister places at their disposal. At one and the same time, he has that responsibility on the one hand, and he is also faced with the responsibility of finding the best possible executives and administrators to form the personnel of this board.
In Section 8, as it stands, it seems to me he has decided to throw overboard the necessity for ensuring by legislation, as far as we possibly can, that the board will be operated in such manner as will guarantee, to the extent to which it is possible to guarantee, that there shall not be any public scandal of any kind. I want to make it quite clear that I am not a bit interested in the particular individual who, I understand, may possibly become chairman of the Authority. My only concern is with the principle involved. It is quite obvious that when we have an artiste of such outstanding qualities as the Minister mentioned here, the Minister cannot be blamed for seeking to put such a person in control of the Authority. It may be debatable as to whether or not such a fine artiste would necessarily be a very good administrator. That is not the issue before us at the moment, but it is one of the considerations the Minister has to bear in mind.
I do not think the Minister is justified in taking the risk inherent in the very weakness of Section 8 as it stands and permitting members of the Authority to have financial interests outside those of the single interests of running the television Authority. It is stated in the section that the individual "shall disclose to the Authority the fact of the interest and the nature thereof, and shall take no part in any deliberation or decision of the Authority relating to the contract, and the disclosure shall be recorded in the minutes of the Authority." I do not think that device is sufficient. I do not think that will protect the public from the possibility of some form of evasion of the very high standards required in these State corporations which are handling public funds.
The difficulty in the matter arises from the fact that you may have nine people absolutely above suspicion; the people the Minister will try to get will naturally be people of that calibre. At the same time, as was said here recently in relation to another matter, not only must justice be done but it must appear to be done. There is, then, the possibility that where there is this dual interest, the public will inevitably, perhaps erroneously, accuse a member, or members, of the Authority of promoting personal financial interests at the expense of the public interest, when, in fact, that may not be the case at all.
Consequently, it seems to me that in allowing this loophole, the Minister is exposing the Authority to avoidable risk of misrepresentation. He would be wise, in the interests of the individual members and in the interests of the Authority as a whole, to accept some amendment such as I have suggested here. There is always the difficulty, where an individual has outside interests and where those interests are closely concerned with the proposed objectives of the television Authority, that there will be a deliberate attempt to promote those interests within the Authority, using the special position held within the Authority for that purpose. Alternatively, an individual member of the Authority may quite legitimately believe that the interests he is promoting are genuinely the best ones from the public point of view, and there may, in fact, be no evil intent at all, but from the point of view of the public, it will be very difficult to explain that there is no evil intent, no evasion of the very serious responsibilities of individuals who find themselves on these State boards and corporations.
The other consideration is that there may be one, two or three individuals, in a group of eight or nine, who have an outside interest and when that outside interest comes up for consideration by the Board in the form of a contract for building, foundation work, the erection of buildings, the supply of equipment, or later on the production of talent for the various programmes which will be necessary, a tremendous amount of patronage will be in the hands of those people. Where there is a conflict of interests, where members of the board have outside associations which will arise from time to time before the board, and where it will appear that they favour one individual, or that two individuals have been favoured by the board, all the members of the board will be smeared with that suggestion, or included in the suggestion—quite wrongly possibly—that they were a party to some favouritism because one of their colleagues on the board happened to have a particular outside interest and won the contract. In the interests of the board, it would be wiser if steps were taken by legislation to avoid the likelihood of such a contingency arising at all.
The other consideration is, of course, that in this question of television, we have taken an unusual way out of our problems in many ways. It could be said it was the Minister's only way out. We are faced with the possibility that the advertising interests may attempt to take over as much time as they can to ensure the sale of their goods and use particular kinds of programmes to attract a mass audience. It is regrettable that it has appeared in most of the findings in recent times that mass audiences are attracted intellectually to the lowest common denominator output of the existing television networks. No doubt, the advertising people are well aware of that and we shall be under very great pressure here, and the Minister and the Government will be under great pressure, to try to prevent the television advertising interests from dominating the tone or the type of programme, or the quality of programme, broadcast by the television Authority. As the Minister knows well domination by these interests in America has provided one of the biggest scandals of the century. There was dishonesty, faking, bribery and corruption of all kinds, and because these interests were given a free hand, they virtually destroyed the whole belief in that form of advertising in the United States by their activities.
I have not seen Ulster television service, but I understood that it would be a fairly well controlled Authority. Recently, advertising interests on that service have tended to sponsor or promote an intellectually moronic and generally meretricious level of programme production. I do not see any way by which we can escape that. The only way by which we can avoid it is by ensuring that there is no possibility of the advertising interests dominating our television Authority. The best way to ensure that is to see that anybody who has such an outside association will not be allowed to become a member of the Authority.
I would be in favour of having all the men on the board full time. That would be a big sacrifice possibly for some of them. On the question of the proposed chairman, I would practically let that individual name his own figure if necessary—within reason of course, and within the resources of the State— to make it possible for him to take on that very responsible job on behalf of the State. The Board would be in much the same position as Cabinet Ministers, who have to make similar sacrifices from time to time. Many members of the Cabinet do make such sacrifices. To that extent, we could protect them, by giving them reasonable remuneration. We would be justified in doing so because in that way they would be allowed to be completely independent in making their decisions, and so far as it is humanly possible they would appear to be making decisions on the merits without any bias in favour or against any individual.
It may be suggested that the advertising interests will pay for the television service and that the costs of the advertisements will pay for the service. I do not accept that point at all. I think it is quite fallacious because the advertisements are paid for indirectly by the public. That is admitted in the Report of the Commission. It is conceded that the public will pay for the service in one way or another, whether initially by the £2,000,000 advanced by the Minister, or by the running costs which will ultimately be paid by everybody in the State in the commodities which they will buy as a result of the advertisements they will see on the television service.
Incidentally, the Minister suggested that my point that the people who cannot afford the service will have to pay for it was not valid. I think it is a valid point and I do not accept Senator O'Brien's answer, that these advertisements promote competition, and in that way reduce prices, so that the poorer people benefit. Since there is no competition, there is no reduction in prices and consequently these people do not benefit.
However, that is beside the point. The main consideration is that public money is being spent directly by the Minister and indirectly in the form of advertisements. We pay one way or the other. We are shareholders in this corporation and we have the right to lay down the standards on which it will be operated. The most important consideration, it seems to me, is the fact that this is a public company established by the Dáil. It is not an individual Minister, a particular political Party or a particular Government who will be affected if there is any scandal or if undesirable suggestions are made about the television Authority. It will be a State company and the ethical standards and practices of that company will be a very important consideration. For that reason, I would ask the Minister seriously to consider accepting the amendment that Section 8 be amended to ensure that the individual must divest himself of any outside interest before accepting membership of the Authority.
The amendment standing in the name of Deputy Palmer which I now move is simpler than the amendment proposed by Deputy Browne and Deputy McQuillan and would really require further elaboration if it were to be put in the Bill, because in addition to the deletion proposed in paragraph (a) of Section 8, it would have to be changed slightly and instead of saying "which the Authority proposes to make," it should read "with which the Authority has any contact."
On a point of procedure, the Deputy is not moving amendment No. 2. We are discussing amendment No. 1.
That is all right.
It is just a point of procedure. I want the procedure to be right.
I appreciate that. One can get into unnecessary knots about this business. The issue here involved is one of conflicting interests. I can remember a time when if you were a member of the town council, the county council, the borough council or the rural district council, if you sold a stone of potatoes to the council you were automatically disqualified from membership. There may have been some amendment of that since the County Management Act on the grounds that such contracts are now made by the county manager as an executive officer of the local authority.
It did not matter a hoot to public finances whether or not a member of the rural district council sold a stone of potatoes to the rural district council. In those days a high standard was demanded. The standard was that if you were a member of a public authority, you did not derive benefit or profit from a contract between yourself and that public authority. There was no restriction on a member of a rural district council making a present of a stone of potatoes to the rural district council. If he was a benevolent person and wanted to bestow something on the rural district council, that act did not disqualify him. What disqualified him was anything that might result in his deriving a profit from a transaction with a public body of which he was a member.
It is a deplorable tendency not only in our society but in other democracies to slither away from that standard. It was a good standard. It involves a certain amount of cost on people who undertake quasi-public responsibilities. If you set your foot on the slippery slope of departing from that standard, it will be very hard to set a new standard.
On page 25, paragraph 69 of the Report of the Television Commission, we read:
The Commission considers that the Authority should take the form of a Board composed of a maximum of nine (9) members which should be given corporate status. The Commission recommends that the operating organisation should be permitted to be represented by having one member on the Authority, and for this purpose to make a nomination to the Government for appointment, if approved, and, subject thereto, that a member of the Authority should have no such financial or other interests as would be likely to affect prejudicially the discharge of his functions as a member of the Authority and should not be a member of the Oireachtas.
Let us face facts. I am not concerned with the identity of any individual it is proposed to appoint to this body. There are nine persons on the Authority. They ask for tenders for, say, the supply of material to constitute canned programmes to fill in the periods when live programmes are not available. Three tenders come before them, two from firms who have no connection with the personnel of the Authority. The third tender is from a firm which is partly or wholly owned by a member of the Authority.
If I were one of the nine members of an Authority and found it to be part of my duty to tell a colleague on that Authority either that he was trying to get an unjust price for what he was offering, or that what he was offering compared with what was being offered from other sources, was manifestly inferior, I should find my assignment extremely difficult. That is one problem. The second problem is this. Suppose I held myself out to be an authority on television and radio matters and, on foot of that reputation, I was chosen for appointment to this Authority. Suppose I then tendered for material for the Authority and quoted a price, how could I, having seen what was offered by my rivals, inform the Board that in my opinion the two rival contractors offered superior material at a more competitive price than I did? If that were true, it would strongly be suggested that my qualifications for being a member of the Authority were highly suspect and that somebody had evaluated me much more highly than they ought to have done.
Is it not true that every time the contract is considered by the Authority, the member of the Authority who is himself a would-be contractor must pass judgment on his own quality in determining whether his tender is to be accepted or rejected? The more I think about this the more astonished I become. Even as short as ten years ago would anybody have come into Dáil Éireann and proposed that a member of an Authority of this kind should have the right to contract with himself to earn a profit out of public money provided he informed all and sundry that that was his intention before he did it?
If such a proposal had been made in this House 25 years ago it would have been laughed out before it was fully formulated. I assume that the basis of this proposal is that it is impossible to constitute an Authority in this country to administer television and radio services without including certain persons who are actively engaged in the commercial side of the business. Surely that is an absolute misconception? We must be able to find nine people in the whole of Ireland who are qualified to constitute an Authority to control radio and television without one of them being actively engaged commercially in the business.
Even if the Minister comes to the conclusion that there is one person he so urgently desires to have on the Authority that he thinks it worth his while to qualify him, surely it would be preferable to employ him as a whole-time servant of the Authority and give him such remuneration as would make it expedient for him to sever his connection with his mercantile interests rather than to declare that he can remain a member of the Authority and derive a profit from contracts made with the Authority, providing only that he discloses to the Authority the fact and nature of his interests and that he shall not take part in the actual deliberation as to whether the contract is to be awarded to his firm or not.
As I say, I think it is a great mistake to get too involved about this. I think the issue is perfectly simple. It is the traditional question of a conflict of interests. I do not think that special legislation of this House is involved or that we can set too high a standard in that regard. I would direct the attention of the House to the fact that it is within the memory of most of us that the humblest member of the smallest rural district council in Ireland was absolutely prohibited from doing what it is proposed to permit a member of this Authority to do and if he attempted to do it——
I think that is wrong.
Deputy Dillon said "some years ago".
There are no rural district councils now. They are all abolished. In the days of the old county councils, no member could derive anything from contracts with the council or body of which he was a member. It may be that since that Managerial Act was introduced a new rule obtains on the grounds that the county manager is now the executive who does the work and that, therefore, a member of the local authority is not directly concerned. I am talking about the old days when the contracts were awarded by resolution of the authority. Then the humblest member of the smallest rural district council was prohibited from doing what we propose by statute to authorise a member of this Authority to do. There was a great multiplicity of these bodies and it was very difficult to find the personnel to man them. The interesting thing is that in those distant days many of these small bodies were constituted of relatively poor men, in many cases very poor men to whom the sacrifice of the right to trade with the local authority, to supply vegetables to the workhouse, milk to the hospital and eggs to the county home was a substantial sacrifice.
It has to be borne in mind that the members of the Ascendancy who manned the Grand Juries seldom found themselves in this dilemma. By the nature of their social standards and wealth they did not normally transact business with the local authorities. After the 1898 Local Government Act was passed, we asked the kind of people to whom these modest transactions meant a great deal voluntarily to forgo them in order to help to take over these local authorities and become members of them. That is a standard more appropriate to public employment than the standards it is proposed to set up under Section 8 of this Bill. I ask the House to believe that we still can find in Ireland nine people, men or women, who are prepared to undertake important work of this character as members of the television Authority who either have no existing interest or who, if they have such, are prepared to give it up in order to observe the standards of conduct more in consonance with our traditions.
Deputy Dr. Browne referred in terms of contemptuous censure to the standards obtaining in the United States of America. I suppose he was referring to Payola or Radiola but, perhaps, he would also remember that the general rule there is that anybody who enters the public service and as a result of his mercantile or professional occupation discovers a conflict of interest, must not only disclose it but surrender it, divest himself of the conflicting interest. They certainly maintain very high standards there. There is no doubt that in any country of 170,000,000 there is ample scope for corruption but the American people have this saving quality. They are a bit too prone in this discreet age to accuse themselves in public. I should hope that their friends would praise them for what is, perhaps, an excess of frankness in that regard.
I imagine that similar things happen in other countries in other parts of the world but it is a capital offence to refer to them. Therefore, we do not hear about them. What I should like to see are standards maintained here at least as high as the standards which the people of the United States aim to maintain. I am very conscious of the fact that we are just as imperfect as our American cousins. We may fall short of our ideals, as they no doubt frequently do, but it is a source of satisfaction to realise that in this country at least we are able to refer to such in public. We may leave ourselves open to the accusation that we are more corrupt than our more discreet neighbours in the world but we would prefer to have our failings known than to surrender our freedom and the right to denounce abuses in public. It is of course true that we shall not have any abuses, if we set our standards so low that what we used to call abuses are now to be called statutory rights.
It is because I want to maintain some standards which we would all agree to be abuses that I ask the Minister to reconsider Section 8 and at least require in 1960 members of the television Authority to accept the same self-denying ordinance which the humblest member of a rural district council cheerfully accepted in 1898.
I want to preface my remarks by saying that what I say now has no reference to anybody living or dead. I have no personal axe to grind in this matter. My remarks are not intended to apply to any particular person. In general, I approve of the structure of this Bill. I think the public interest is being safeguarded. I think the general structure is satisfactory. The members of the television Authority within a wide range of authority have the responsibility for the conduct and financing of our future television service.
In Section 8, there is a very serious lapse from what were formerly regarded as essential standards of public and private rectitude. Section 8 is a blot on the entire Bill. I know of no other legislation which carries a clause like Section 8 and I doubt if any other such legislation exists. If it does, it did not have my support. I doubt the wisdom of this approach, even from the point of view of utilising what may be considered indispensable service for the operation of a television system.
Let us see what will happen under this Bill. There may be seven members, or there may be nine members, as the case may be. Inevitably, if people are thrown together, or come on to a board, for four or five years, even assuming they were unknown to one another before going on the board, they will nevertheless be aware of all their various commercial associations. I can visualise this board consisting of, let us say, nine members and every one of the nine will know the kind of activities in which the other members are engaged. Inevitably, if you throw nine people together on a board, it certainly will produce a very warm personal friendship and camaraderie between them. Thus you may have the position in which the board, having invited tenders, receive tenders which include one from a person who is a member of the board.
It is suggested that if that person is a member of the Board, he should disclose his interest in the contract at once and not participate in the discussion. Does anyone really believe that that, of itself, really ensures that there will be a rigidly scrupulous approach to the consideration of the contract? Is it not inevitable that the member who has the interest will have friends on the board? Is it not expecting too much to imagine that the mere fact that one member leaves the council chamber or the board room will automatically black out the friendships he has made with other members? Are we to assume that in every case these warm personal friendships, these high personal regards, these memories of earlier parties, of dinners, of luncheons, of happy atmospheres on racecourses and elsewhere, will also disappear and that members will consider the estimates on the basis of never having seen one another before?
It may all happen but we are living in 1960, and reading the newspapers day in day out, of this country and other countries throughout the world, has convinced me there is always a grave danger of a degradation of what we have a right to expect in such circumstances—a high and inalienable standard of rectitude. Is it not the position that a member who withdraws from a board room when a tender in which he has an interest is being considered will still leave behind him a memory of himself and an affection for himself which might show up in the view that "Jack Black who has just left, really provides the best kind of service"?
This may not be a tender in which quantities are involved, in which somebody is giving certain quantities for a certain sum, and others are offering more—in which case perhaps it would be easy enough to see where you are getting the value—but a tender may be submitted in which two or three people are interested in providing a particular service, an intangible thing, in which case it is not unreasonable to imagine that certain members of the board may say, if a service is involved, "I believe such and such a group provide the best service." There is nothing definable about it; nothing you can test; nothing tangible; nothing you can weigh; nothing you can measure. It is just an inward feeling from what he has heard from people in a better position to judge, that a particular body can provide a better service than another. That may well be advanced in justification of giving to a member of a board, or his firm or some of his associates, a contract which could not have been accepted if there were a wide disparity of price in respect of the supply, let us say, of coal or oil or electricity for the operation of the television service.
The Minister has lapsed in respect of this Section 8. I do not think it is the kind of section to command public approval. I think there would be public concern that in a small body of seven or nine—and I think a quorum is about three—you may find the situation in which a small group of people, because of the self-interest of others, may have the determination of a contract in the absence of a number of colleagues, absence because of the fact that they have an interest in the submission of tenders. As I said at the outset, I have no particular personal axe to grind, no grudge against anyone, but I do think it is essential to give the public the feeling that there is no possibility of any person who is a member of the television Authority being able to use his position, or his friendship with other people there, as a means of getting a contract for his company or a contract in which he has a beneficial interest.
Something else may arise. It may be discovered when the board has been appointed that all these people could say with their hands on their hearts: "We have no interest in any contract likely to come to the board." That may be so, but some firms might say: "It would be very good for us if we managed to get Mr. Jack Black, or Mr. Tom White, who is on the television Authority, to join our company in some capacity or other because you know he is a member of the Authority. It is true that under Section 8 he will have to disclose his interest in our company, but after all, it is a small board and if we had Jack Black on this board of seven or nine as a kind of public relations officer, it might not do us any harm, particularly as the prospects of doing business with the Authority may be pretty bright and fairly widespread." That is a possibility that cannot be overlooked.
As I say, I think the Minister ought to realise that this is a substantial step down from what has come to be regarded as an essential and inalienable standard of rectitude in matters of this kind. The Minister should undertake to amend the section — whether this amendment is the best way to do that or not is another matter—not to prevent the certainty of abuses because nobody can say there will be abuses, but the possibility of abuses and the probability that the public may say that it is possible to be a member of the board and at the same time, remain a member of the board if your contract has been accepted.
Once the member concerned absents himself from the board, the contract can, in fact, be accepted, but you have got 3,000,000 people in a nation which has more than a dozen suspicious citizens who are willing to say: "Was that not a queer thing that happened the other day? Did you see that so-and-so got a contract for the television service and he is in so-and-so's and a member of the board? He must be a pal of the Minister's or related to so-and-so and that is how the whole thing was done." He will convince a few other credulous people who have never read the Bill and who know nothing about Section 8, and who even if they read Section 8 would know nothing about it, and who will say that the whole thing is a wangle. It is a most delightful way of describing a situation in Ireland, particularly when you are short of evidence to justify your allegation. I would urge the Minister strongly to think on this matter again.
As has been suggested, this section is open to a lot of wangling. I have been up against wangles all my life, so I am an authority on the subject. Many people have tried to wangle me out of membership of the city council, out of membership of the Dáil and even out of existence. I know the extent to which people will go to wangle. Therefore, I believe, there are certain dangers in this section, unless the Minister provides more safeguards than those in the section to ensure that the matter is not simply left to people's consciences. In many ways, people have no consciences. Certainly it has been my experience in politics that politicians have no consciences.
All the financial interests of the members of this Authority should be disclosed, not just the fact that they have an interest in somebody looking for a contract. All their financial interests should be known beforehand. In fact, it should even be known whether they were members of a political Party or had been members of a political Party. It is easy for a person to disclose that he had an interest. That does not stop him wangling beforehand and fixing everything so that when the contract is almost accepted he may say: "I have an interest in this but the job has all been prepared." The wangle could have been prepared beforehand, and that lets him out.
I believe there will be many attempts to lobby people on this Authority. Many people will be interested in business matters; artistes will be interested in achieving success and politicians will be interested in getting their faces before the public. I imagine that this body will be subjected relentlessly to a tremendous amount of lobbying. Therefore, everything should be known about those people and every form of check should be provided. Perhaps Deputy Browne's amendment, or some similar one, would be the best way of achieving this.
As has been pointed out, these people will be strangers to one another at the beginning, but we know that people become as thick as thieves after a while when they get to know one another and particularly when they get to drink with one another. They then begin to confide in one another and fix things. That has always been done. It was a well-known fact in regard to many local bodies that while persons looking for contracts or employment were statutorily obliged to apply and send in fees, the contract was made or the employment given beforehand. I am not saying it is done now, but it was done when certain boards had the authority to make contracts and give employment. I know it was done. It goes to show that when people get to know one another, they may make a bit of a deal. The public should be protected against conduct of that kind.
I have been reading a history of New York recently, dealing particularly with Tammany Hall. It was common for men brought before the Bench by various groups to have a bit of a powwow in a back room before there was any trial and get things nicely fixed. That was because of certain associations between the judges and certain groups at one time or another. Men are weak and susceptible to influences. Because men are weak, every form of check should be made. As I said, I have been subjected to wangles all my life and I have survived them, thank God. As I said on a previous occasion, I do not trust anybody; neither should the public nor this House trust anybody.
I want very strongly to support the amendment of Deputy Palmer. I want to do so on the principle that is involved. The fact that one particular person has of necessity been identified with this principle, and has identified himself with the principle in a certain newspaper, is incidental to the view that I expressed. I want, first of all, to thank the Minister for his courtesy in sending me, as he promised on the Second Reading, a list of the sections which he said were similar and had been inserted in previous Acts: the Turf Development Act, Section 12; the Sea Fisheries Act, paragraph 6 of the First Schedule, which is not the same as this section, although the Minister says it is almost precisely the same; the Gaeltacht Industries Act, 1957; the Exports Promotion Act, 1959; the Electricity Supply Act, 1927, Section 10; the Transport Act, 1950, Section 7.
While I am grateful to the Minister for his courtesy in giving me that information, I only wish it were correct. I do not expect the Minister himself to be an interpreter of public statutes, but it is the Minister who accepts responsibility for information of the sort given. The information in respect of the Electricity Supply Act is so untrue as to be a complete and absolute distortion of the facts. Section 10 of that Act is more or less in the same words as this section. About the difference in words I make no comment, because I do not think the difference in drafting is of any consequence. But the vital thing—the thing which the Minister omitted to disclose to me but which I knew from the fact of having other outside interests—is that Section 11 of the Electricity Supply Act, 1927, completely restricts the membership of the Electricity Supply Board.
That has been already stated in the Seanad.
Section 11 of the Electricity Supply Act is in exact comparison to what should appear in relation to this Board. Subsection (1) of Section 11 of that Act, which was not mentioned at all by the Minister in the letter he caused to be sent to me, states:
Every person appointed to be a member of the Board shall within three months after his appointment absolutely sell and dispose of all shares in any electrical undertaking which he shall at the time of his appointment own or be interested in for his own benefit, and if any shares in any electrical undertaking shall come to or vest in a member of the Board by will or succession for his own benefit, he shall within three months after the same shall have so come to or vested in him, absolutely sell and dispose of the same or his interest therein.
Subsection (2) states:
A member of the Board shall not, while he holds that office, purchase, take, or become interested in for his own benefit any shares in any electrical undertaking.
Subsection (3) states, and this is the important subsection:
Any member of the Board who shall retain, purchase, take or become or remain interested in any shares in any electrical undertaking in contravention of this section shall be disqualified for and be deemed to have vacated his office as such member.
Subsection (4) reads:
In this section the expression "shares in any electrical undertaking" means and includes any stock, shares, debentures, debenture stock, bonds, or other securities of any company engaged in the generation, distribution, or supply of electricity—
and here is the important part:
—or the manufacture of or wholesale or retail dealing in electrical apparatus and includes any share or interest in any unincorporated undertaking similarly engaged.
The framers of that Act took most special care in relation to the Electricity Supply Board that the people dealing day in and day out with the Board would not be in the position of sitting in judgment upon themselves, in the position of being able to allocate contracts to themselves, but in this section the Minister has seen fit to change the whole basis, for a State company, of the manner in which contracts are to be regulated and carried through.
To put it very mildly, I think that the Minister misled me, or attempted to mislead me, perhaps inadvertently, by not referring to Section 11 when he disclosed these sections in the letter to which I have referred. What is proposed here? As I say, I am not interested in the persons concerned. I am interested purely in a principle and it so happens that the Minister has, in advance of the Act, in advance of the statute in this case, indicated whom he intends to appoint. In the ordinary way, if the Minister had not done that, we would discuss this section completely in the abstract, without any knowledge of any particular person, but if a particular person's name is inevitably, by implication or otherwise, brought into the discussion on Section 8 and the amendments to Section 8, it is not the people who condemn Section 8 who bring in his name. It is the Minister who indicated in advance that he is the person who is to be appointed.
What has happened? The Minister has indicated that he intends to appoint as the Chairman of this Authority— and for all we know other members of it because I do not know that he is the only one—a person whose entire business is connected with television, whose entire financial business is connected with the making and the selling of programmes, whose entire business has been acting as an agent —I suppose "agent" would be the correct word — who produces programmes and sells them, and who buys programmes already made and then resells them.
I do not want to say anything about his technical competence where programmes are concerned. I offer no criticism on that whatever. I offer no criticism whatever of him personally. I like his technical programmes and I always watch one of them on Sunday nights, but that is not the point. The point is that here is a person whose whole business is the making of programmes, who admits himself in a newspaper interview, that he has been buying the rights for Ireland of programmes made throughout the world, for the purpose of being able to resell these programmes to the Authority when it is set up and when it is in operation. How on earth can any Minister or any Government stand over that as a principle proper to public life?
I am not making any aspersions whatever on the principles of the individual concerned or on the motives which actuated him. I am sure some of the motives which actuate him are motives to ensure we shall have good television programmes here, but that is not the point. The point is that he is the person who is to be Chairman of the Authority one minute, and in another moment the person who will be asking the Authority for authority to fix a rate of commission appropriate to him, to pay him and his concern for the programme material the Authority is to use.
A man cannot serve two masters and the Minister in Section 8 is asking the House to accept that he can. I can understand in relation to other aspects of other State-sponsored bodies there being occasional, incidental, detailed, trifling ways in which a member of a Board might be involved in some contract with the concern itself. Take Coras Iompair Éireann, for example. All of us occasionally travel on a train and to go on a train is to enter into a contract. We buy tickets and it would be nonsense to say that a member of Coras Iompair Éireann could not buy a ticket and travel on a train. There would have to be some clause of some sort to ensure that the director will be able to buy a ticket——
He can travel free.
There would be occasions on which a member of the Board of Coras Iompair Éireann would employ C.I.E. to entrain his cattle or to bring them by lorry to or from a fair. There would be occasions perhaps—if we had the system operated in other countries of people moving house when they move office—of his wanting C.I.E. to move his furniture whenever he was changing his abode. In relation to trivial, incidental matters of that sort, everybody would understand that it was proper for him as a member of the Board to have that work done by contract with the Board, at fixed prices which are available to everybody else, but what would one say if a Minister came to this House and told us he proposed to appoint as Chairman of C.I.E. the chairman of a firm of furniture removers or the chairman of one of the firms regularly in day to day competition with C.I.E.? Would one not think it an extraordinary thing for a Minister to do? That is precisely what the Minister is asking us to accept in this Bill?
I can understand in relation to export promotion that it would be occasionally desirable for a firm, of which a member was also a member of Coras Tráchtála Teoranta, to hold a promotional exhibition in London or New York, and that it would be desirable to make an agreement with the firm of which that member of the Board was also a Director to put up money or to put up goods for display and sale at that exhibition. It would be proper to permit that type of trifling and incidental contact and contract as between a member of the Board of Coras Tráchtála and a member of an outside firm, but I do not think anybody would suggest that it would be proper for a company to be able virtually to monopolise the services of Coras Tráchtála and at the same time, to have on Coras Tráchtála a person who was also a director of the company concerned.
The whole matter in relation to this is being taken completely away from the realm of a trifling incidental contract by the manner in which the Minister himself has indicated that a person, whose sole business this is, is to be made, in his case, a member of an Authority.
We are not dependent merely on hearsay or on conjecture as to the type of contract to be made between the television Authority on the one hand and a body of which the Chairman is also a member—he may be chairman of it, for all I know, but certainly a member, the most influential member —because, very straightforwardly, the person concerned has given an interview to the newspapers and has said that what he has been doing is securing options on the Irish rights of both British and American television programmes.
Surely it is possible to get personnel for this Authority who will not be in the position of having already gone out and secured options of this sort and who will then sell these options to the Authority of which they will be members? When that situation has been publicised, as it has been publicised in the Press and elsewhere, how on earth will anybody believe that this is all clear and above-board? I am not saying that it will not be, but supposing somebody offers a programme and the programme is turned down in favour of a programme that has been bought by the chairman's organisation and resold by the chairman's organisation to the television Authority, even if the chairman's programme is 100 per cent. better, the person who is turned down will feel that he did not get a fair crack or a fair deal. Is that the way in which this new national service should be started?
I want to urge the Minister as strongly as I can, if he does not accept the amendment in the form of words in which it is now before us, at least to make it clear now that he will follow the pattern that was set up in 1927, by adding to this a section to ensure that those who are engaged in the business of broadcasting—meaning thereby to cover sound and visual —cannot continue in that business while they are members of the Authority, just as, in 1927, those who were engaged in the business of electricity could no longer remain engaged in that business while they were members of the Electricity Supply Board.
Deputy Dr. Browne pressed on me the necessity to accept the amendment. If I accepted the amendment tabled by Deputy Dr. Browne or the amendment standing in the name of Deputy Palmer, I would, in fact, be restricting the choice of the Government as to the people they think should be members of the new Authority.
It is true, of course, as Deputy Sweetman has said, that the Electricity Supply Act, 1927, contained Section 11. The matter was fully discussed in the Seanad, and it must have been a matter of general knowledge to Deputies that I made reference in the Seanad to the Electricity Supply Act, 1927, and quoted Section 10 as a section similar to Section 8 of this Bill, and that there was then a further discussion of Section 11 of the 1927 Act. When I sent Deputy Sweetman the names of the Acts and the sections that were, as I said, precisely in the same form as Section 8, I did so on the understanding that Deputy Sweetman must have known that Section 11 was contained in the 1927 Act.
It is a long time since 1927. The Electricity Supply Act, 1927, was the first Act by which the State established a public authority, a semi-State body, to perform a public function of this nature. By that Act, they established the Electricity Supply Board. Stemming from that there have been established a number of semi-State bodies charged with the responsibility of certain national work and the provisions contained in Section 11 of the 1927 Act have already been departed from in the other Acts. In the case of the Transport Act, 1950, the Export Promotion Act, 1959, the Gaeltacht Industries Act, 1957, the Sea Fisheries Act, 1952 and the Turf Development Act, 1946, those provisions have been dropped.
In my view, the designers and originators of the Electricity Supply Act, 1927 were concerned with the establishment of the first semi-State authority in a new State and they wanted to make absolutely certain that a certain standard would be maintained. The State has had experience of the operations of this first semi-State body in practice. We have had an outstanding example of what can be done by semi-State organisations in national development and we have had set for ourselves a very high standard in public service by the members of all the semi-State authorities. No matter what we may think of them as individuals or how we may differ from the Government who appointed people to such authorities, we have not had up to now any public scandal in relation to public contracts or public business executed by our semi-State bodies.
It is true, as Deputy Dillon said, that early in the century, for many years before that and for some time after the State was founded a member of a rural district council or other local authority could not have a contract with the authority of which he was a member. However, we are not quite so innocent as not to realise that there were ways and means of getting over that disability. It was well known that there were many people serving on local authorities who had, in fact, contracts with the local authority, and at the present time a person can divest himself of his interests while retaining a beneficial interest in contracts with an authority of which he may be a member.
Would the Minister consider that desirable?
It is not desirable.
Surely that is the point.
It is a fact, but we must approach this matter as rational beings and we must have a certain trust in the people who make the appointments to any body or board, the Government in this case. We must also trust, to a very large extent, the integrity of the people appointed to maintain the standard the Minister and the Government of the day expect from the television Authority.
It is difficult to deal with the amendments before me and with Section 8 when the status of a particular person is involved. It is true I said in answer to Deputy Sweetman last week that a certain person would be invited to act as chairman of this Authority. I could not give any other answer to Deputy Sweetman when he put the question to me because in the public notice which we published at the time the advisory committee was established, it was made perfectly plain that the members of that advisory committee would be invited to become members of the statutory body when it was established under the Act. I have here the announcement made on my behalf by the Government Information Bureau, in October, 1959. It was publicly stated at the time that this person would be asked to accept membership of the Authority. When the Government came to discuss the establishment of this broadcasting Authority and the setting up of a television service, the question arose of supplementing the advice available to the Government and to me in this new and complex situation.
There was at that time, and there has been since, a good deal of discussion as to what type of technical equipment should be purchased by the Government for the new television service, what design our studios should take and what planning should be done in advance in relation to the establishment of this service. As a result of this consideration, the Government decided to establish this advisory committee to advise and assist them in arranging for the supply of the equipment which will be required for the television transmitter station which is to serve the Dublin area, for temporary Dublin studios and for the link between the station and the studios in co-operation with the Commissioners of Public Works, for the provision of the buildings for the transmitter station which is to serve the Dublin area and the buildings for the temporary Dublin studios, and to have the acquisition of land which will be required for the studios and for any necessary approach roads to television transmitter stations outside the Dublin area put in hand immediately by the Commissioners of Public Works.
In considering the personnel of this committee, the Government regarded the appointment of this person, if he accepted the invitation to be a member, as very desirable in view of his association with the television service in England and his international reputation as a television personality. The work of this committee is not yet completed and when the new Authority is established on the passage of this Bill into law, the Authority will be concerned with the provision of the new studios at Montrose, the erection of the Dublin transmitter and other matters which I have mentioned. The actual broadcasting of television programmes is not likely to commence for some time to come and in the meantime the Authority will largely be concerned with matters on which the Television Committee have given advice.
When this gentleman was first interviewed by the Taoiseach and myself, he made it quite plain to us that his business interests might conceivably interfere with his continued membership of the Authority. We pointed out that in that event, he would resign from the Authority and that we should not be disappointed if he had to take that step. It was quite clear to the three of us that the Government were also free to make that decision. Before the actual broadcasting of programmes commences, it may be necessary to have another look at this question and to have further discussion with this gentleman, an exemplary young Irishman of good character and fine ability who thought it his patriotic duty to place at the disposal of the Government the knowledge and experience he undoubtedly had gained by virtue of his active association with television and in the presentation of programmes.
If his public statement is read closely—and I encouraged him to make that statement—it will be found that what I have said now is contained therein, that he was glad to accept the invitation to initiate an Irish television service. If we could discuss the principle involved in the amendment and in the section as distinct from any individual, it would be so much better.
As I see it, the function of the Government is to make sure that each member of the Authority has not a business interest or a contract interest in the Authority. It depends then on the degree of that interest, to what extent the individual concerned is committed in his own business arrangements, and what are the prospects of his business having any contractual obligations to the Authority. If we were to restrict ourselves completely to the elimination of interests, we would be depriving ourselves of the opportunity of placing on the Authority people who, by their business experience, their knowledge and education, would be very useful members of the Authority.
It is admitted by Deputies who have spoken that it is almost impossible to find people among the public who will be suitable as members of the Authority and who will not have some very small interest in the Authority or its business. We had Deputy Sweetman going to the extreme of pointing out the small interest the ordinary person can have in a transport or other organisation. Even the holders of wireless or television licences could be said to have an interest in the Authority. It would be ridiculous to take the matter so far and it would be also ridiculous to prevent suitable people from being members of the Authority because they have some interest. If they were employees of a firm buying advertising time from the Authority, we should not, if they are otherwise eligible and suitable as members of the Authority, deprive the Government of the opportunity of appointing them because of that small interest.
I think Section 8 as it stands is precisely the same as the sections in the other Acts I have named, the Turf Development Act, the Sea Fisheries Act, the Gaeltacht Industries Act and the Export Promotion Act. It is a standard section and I am advised that it adequately covers the problem we have on hands, a problem which faces any Government establishing a semi-State body: it is one of the inherent problems. The Government must make up their minds and satisfy themselves that they will appoint the proper persons on the Authority, persons who will maintain the standard of public dealing to which we are accustomed in semi-State bodies.
I cannot see why the Opposition, either Deputy Dr. Browne or the Fine Gael Party, wish to amend this section. If the Government make a mistake and if they do not appoint the proper persons on the Authority, that is the Government's responsibility and they can be held to it by the public and by this House. It would be foolish unduly to restrict the Government in their choice by the amendments put forward here.
We could have a different type of Authority. We could decide, for instance, if we wished not to take any member of the general public, any of the business community or other classes of people that make up the Irish nation. We could appoint a small authority of civil servants to make absolutely certain that there would be no business interest and no contracting interests represented on the board. But I do not think we could get from such a board what we desire in this Authority. We are dealing with a service which will make a very deep impression on our people: it will be seen and heard in every home where it is found possible to have a television receiver. It will be in the chimney corner, as it were, and on the Authority we need people from every walk of life, if we can get them. We need people who represent broad interests within the country and people who can apply their minds in a business way to the affairs of this Authority.
So far as small contracts are concerned, the Director General and his staff will deal with them. The matter may never come in a formal way before the Authority, which will deal with policy matters and will lay down broadly how contracts are to be dealt with by the staff. There will be generalisations in regard to charges for time and so on. It is only where you have a long-term contract and one of outstanding value that it would be dealt with immediately by the Authority itself. Therefore, this situation which has been suggested of a member of the Authority walking out every time a contract is being decided would not arise. There will not be so many big contracts to be dealt with by the Authority.
I do not know if I have answered all the points put to me on this section but I think the section, as drafted, is sufficient security and that it is not a contravention of any principle laid down in any previous act. It is, of course, true that we have departed from the Electricity Supply Act of 1927. It has already been departed from and nobody regards any of the authorities which exist under any of the other Acts as being any worse in regard to contracts or public service or maintenance of public standards than the authority appointed in 1927 as the Electricity Supply Board.
The boards I have named, or some of them, handle very much more valuable contracts than any envisaged by us as likely to be made by the television Authority and they operate under almost precisely the same section as this Section 8. We have not yet, as I said earlier, experienced any scandal in public life in that regard and I hope and trust that we shall not have any such scandal in this regard in the future. The writing-in of restrictive clauses in Acts of Parliament will not prevent scandal if our people permit of such acts being perpetrated upon them and do not take public action. There is nothing one can do if the standards of our people are lowered and there is no medium so capable of lowering the general standards of our people than the propagation of unsuitable material through the television medium. I feel, therefore, that we must obtain on the Authority people of the highest integrity.
I think what the Minister has said would be much more satisfactory if we could discuss this matter without referring to individuals. It was not the Opposition——
I know that.
——who brought individuals into this debate. Earlier on, in the discussion on this Bill, I said that I thought the Government had handled this whole business, or, at any rate, most of it before the present Minister became responsible, in a most unfortunate manner. They set up a Commission to make a report on a certain basis. The Commission duly reported on the assumption that the various undertakings which had come before them would provide a service without involving a charge on the Exchequer. After that Commission had reported on that basis, the Government changed their minds. Somewhere about the same point they changed the Minister. Still later they established a temporary ad hoc advisory committee. I can sympathise with and, in fact, understand the Minister's problem in this regard.
This is a highly technical matter. This is a new service which necessarily involves getting the views and opinions of people who have had experience in similar services elsewhere. In so far as this country is concerned, there were very few people in that category and, having looked at the position, they decided to establish an advisory committee, consisting of business people and one person who had practical experience of organising television programmes.
Leaving all that aside for the moment, I believe that we should endeavour to frame this legislation in such a way that there will be no possibility of any conflict of interest. Even a breadth of suspicion could do considerable harm. We have had examples elsewhere recently of what can happen. Considerable publicity was given to programmes on television services in other countries and to the manner in which certain programmes were decided on and arranged. That publicity undoubtedly shook public confidence in the administration of these schemes. I believe we should, in so far as we can, by inscribing in legislation the necessary prohibitions, ensure that nothing of the kind can happen here.
In this service, we are dealing with something which is new, something which will be established with public money, and which will provide a medium of entertainment which will have widespread repercussions. The fact that certain other Acts have clauses similar to Section 10 does not answer the case here. In none of the other Acts, not even in the case of the Electricity Supply Act, is there an absolute monopoly. Under this section, this new board will have an absolute monopoly of the service provided. It is conceivable that a conflict of interest could arise on a particular programme. Conflict of interest could arise where alternative programmes will have been refused or declined and no other promoter or undertaker will be in a position to compete at any time with that particular programme, or service, while that contract is in existence.
The prohibition in Section 11 of the Act of 1927 was undoubtedly a wise one. I have often thought, and I have expressed this view before, that one of the unsatisfactory features of legislation dealing with semi-State bodies is that they do not follow, with perhaps certain exceptions for particular reasons, a similar pattern. Different conditions, different terms of appointment, different requirements are laid down in different Acts. To a considerable extent, the provisions follow the same pattern, but, for no really known reason and, very often, for no really valid reason, they depart from the pattern in certain respects. Undoubtedly legislation will have to vary in so far as the objects of the particular undertaking are concerned; but, so far as the term of office of the directors and the interest which they may or may not have are concerned, there are variations in conditions.
It is significant, however, that in the report of the Television Authority in Chapter 5, paragraph 69—remember, this Authority reported just 12 months ago—it is stated, on the assumption that the body appointed would be an organisation operating under licence, "that a member of the board should have no such financial or other interest as would be likely to affect prejudically the discharge of his functions as a member of the Authority." It is significant that that body, reporting 12 months ago, should have made that reservation in its Report.
Recently we have had an opportunity of reading the very strong criticism of certain programmes, on the ground that the material was unsuitable. It is of the utmost importance in the public interest, therefore, that this body should be so regulated as to leave no room for any suggestion, even of a breath of suspicion of any sort. So far as my experience goes, I should like to say that the programme identified with the person concerned is one of the best programmes on B.B.C. television. It is a desirable programme in every way and one which could not be criticised from any angle. Generally, it is an entertaining and an interesting programme, but that is not the point. It is unfortunate, as I say, that this cannot be considered without referring, either directly or indirectly, to the person concerned.
A later section of the Bill, Section 16, which defines generally the functions of the Authority says:
...the Authority shall have the following powers:
(c) to originate programmes and procure programmes from any source;
(d) to make contracts, agreements and arrangements incidental or conducive to the objects of the Authority;
Is it not inconceivable that if this Authority, more especially if the person concerned is the Chairman, should consider contracts or the arrangement of programmes, or the securing from any source of a programme and if a conflict of interests arises, it would be satisfied by the person concerned leaving the meeting and taking no part in the deliberations and the decision of the Authority and that the disclosure should be recorded in the minutes? I think in this case the requirements laid down in Section 11—I need not read it again—of the Electricity Supply Act, 1927, are more appropriate, more especially when we take into account the fact that the Television Commission recommended, at Paragraph 69, that a member of the Authority should have no such special financial or other interest as would be likely to affect prejudicially the discharge of this functions.
It is, of course, quite possible for a person to divest himself of one interest while retaining another, but as this is a service of an entirely new kind in which the body appointed will have absolute monopoly of both sound broadcasting and the television service, in those circumstances, it is not comparable with any other State body which has been set up here. It is a fact that the E.S.B. and Bord na Móna have a monopoly, but in both of those cases, people have an alternative source. There is no alternative source here or no alternative service comparable with this.
I accept, as the Minister has said, that the person concerned has said that if there is any conflict of interests, he will resign, but I suggest to the Minister that this way is not the prudent course to prevent that situation arising. Before a conflict of interest arises, there should be a prohibition in the Act in order that the public will be satisfied that ab initio this matter has been established on the basis that there is no conflict of interests and in the knowledge that the Government have taken steps to ensure that the public interest is entirely safeguarded.
It is much better in these matters to avoid a problem rather than to try to deal with it when it arises. We have an opportunity to avoid getting into a situation which may cause very considerable difficulty and may, indeed, affect public opinion and reaction to sound broadcasting and the television service. It is better in these cases more especially when we are on notice, as we undoubtedly are, that a conflict of interests could conceivably arise, to avoid it initially rather than deal with the situation if it should develop.
Major de Valera
I do not think there will be any essential difference between any of us as to the fundamental standards to be maintained here. As the Minister has pointed out, it is a question of finding the best and most appropriate way of attaining that standard. I rise for two purposes. I rise, first, merely to balance what Deputy Sweetman has said about the Electricity Supply Act, 1927. What he said and what the Minister said about that Act is correct. What Deputy Dillon said about the local authorities in the old days is also correct, but, as the Minister pointed out, it was a very poor insurance for the spirit of the Act.
Then, I should like to point out, for the record, that the principle of interested parties on a board disclosing their interest, and the principle tacitly accepted that in certain cases that would be a necessity, is by no means a new one. In the Companies Act, for instance, you will find that it has always been provided—the 1908 Act was the product of a fairly long history—that directors in public companies may have contracts with companies in their capacity as directors of other companies——
What type of companies?
Major de Valera
Public companies. I think it arises in two ways To give a specific reference, the 1908 Companies Act provides—and this is important—that a director shall be disqualified if he is concerned or participates in profits of any contracts with the company but then it goes on to make a proviso, which will be found in Schedule A. The proviso is in paragraph 77 of Schedule A.—
Provided, however, that no director shall vacate his office by reason of his being a member of any company which has entered into contracts with or done any work for the company of which he is a director: but a director shall not vote in respect of any such contract or work, and if he does so vote his vote shall not be counted.
In articles of association, you will often find provision—something like what is in the Act—explicitly enabling a director to have an interest, if he discloses it and does not vote. That is the point. The 1927 Act was probably very explicit. As the Minister has pointed out, it brought in a standard and a rigour which so far as I know has not been exceeded since and which exceeded anything that was explicitly there before.
A comparable Act—and this is rather interesting—is the Transport Act, 1950. I shall quote from this Act because it was not passed by a Fianna Fáil Government. This Act was passed by a Government of which Deputy Norton, Deputy Dr. Browne and Deputy Dillon were members and in which Deputy Cosgrave was a Parliamentary Secretary. In Section 7 of that Act, there are elaborate provisions governing the Board and in relation to the members of the Board. Paragraph (c), subsection (6) of Section 7 reads:—
It shall be the duty of a member of the Board who is in any way, whether directly or indirectly, interested in any contract made or proposed to be made by the Board to disclose the nature of his interest at a meeting of the Board, and the disclosure shall be forthwith recorded in the minutes of the Board, and the member who is so interested shall not take part in any deliberation or decision of the Board with respect to that contract.
I have intervened merely to point out that this type of provision is much more ordinary than the type of provision in the 1927 Act and that, therefore, in so far as the form and general content of the provision are concerned, there does not seem to me here any very great departure from what is in other Acts. I say all that with a full appreciation of the principle of integrity which inspires the movers of the amendment in this case. I do not think the Minister or anybody on this bench will be in any way behind Deputy Dr. Browne or Deputy Palmer in wanting to enforce that principle.
This Bill seems to be pretty well in line with the precedents and even with the precedent of the 1950 Act which I quoted. I think we all agree that transport and communications are of comparable public importance with television.
That brings us to the kernel of this discussion in a sense. I wonder if this discussion would have been so marked or if the point would have been so controversial, if a particular person had not been named in advance, if there were not any particular personal circumstances affecting the discussion of this section. In that regard, no further answer can be made than what the Minister has made.
I think the Minister has a point when he says that it is the spirit and the actual controls in the system that will count more in the long run than mere statutory provisions. There is an old saying that the law can be an ass and that sometimes a technicality can be made to work in precisely the wrong way when judged from the standpoint of the intention originally behind the enactment. On the other hand, the sanctions that secure integrity in public appointments and a high standard of public morality are those which spring, as the Minister said, in the first instance, from this House; thereafter, the integrity of the Government of the day and then, perhaps, not less the integrity of the personnel appointed to the authorities in question.
In regard to the latter point, the Government's position is simply that there happens to be, uniquely—perhaps it is unfortunate that that is so—one person who could, so to speak, step into the gap for the nation. It was not a question of stepping into the gap for the Government but for the nation.
It seems to me we could balance up this discussion at least by considering the case for retaining this section and for standing to the precedents and the principle that, above all, in the last analysis, it is this House and the Government and the standard of the appointees that will ensure that the public welfare is looked after adequately.
The Minister called in evidence the Electricity (Supply) Act, 1927. He told the House that Section 10 was the precedent on which he rested for Section 8 of this Bill. I do not care to charge him with being disingenuous. How he could refer the House to Section 10 as the valid basis for Section 8 of the television Bill, without advertising to Section 11 which goes on to provide the very thing we seek by our amendment to secure, I cannot understand. You cannot read Section 10 of the Electricity (Supply) Act, 1927, without Section 11 and Section 11 expressly provides:
"Every person appointed to be a member of the Board shall within three months after his appointment absolutely sell and dispose of all shares in any electrical undertaking which he shall, at the time of his appointment, own or be interested in for his own benefit, and if any shares in any electrical undertaking shall come to or vest in a member of the Board by will or succession for his own benefit, he shall within three months after the same shall have so come to or vested in him, absolutely sell and dispose of the same or his interest therein."
I cannot doubt that the Minister had his attention directed to that section when looking at Section 10.
Section 11 was discussed in the Seanad.
The Minister has his rights in another place but he has his obligations here.
I know that.
I should have felt he had an obligation to me and every other Deputy to direct our attention to Section 11, if he wished to direct our attention to Section 10. I should like to comment on the observations by Deputy de Valera and to say to him that it is fantastic to suggest that the personality of Mr. Eamonn Andrews is involved here. I have never seen Mr. Eamonn Andrews; I have never met Mr. Andrews. I do not know anything about Mr. Eamonn Andrews except that he appears to be a well-known and reputable member of the entertainment profession largely associated with television and radio. His personality, so far as I am concerned, does not enter into this matter. I am concerned with a very simple issue and that is the conflict of interests. I am concerned to ensure that we shall not by our legislation lower the standards ordinarily governing conduct in the public eye in this country. That is all.
Major de Valera
I do not want to suggest that I made it a matter of personality but if there is no consideration of the person, if it is a matter in principle, how do we distinguish this Bill from the 1950 Act?
It is perfectly simple if you stop to think of it. If you are dealing with a transport problem, everybody who buys a railway ticket has a certain contract with the transport authority. Everybody who gets a load of goods carried to or from his establishment is associated by contract with the transport authority.
Everybody who buys a television licence is the same.
It is payable to the Minister, not to the Authority.
Surely there is a distinction there?
And, as the Minister said, there has to be a Vote every year.
Deputy de Valera pleaded for a rational approach to this question. When you are creating a transport monopoly and seeking for a board to administer it on behalf of the State, naturally you look for people familiar with the trade and commerce of the country. Is that not so?
Major de Valera
Yes.
You actually got a man to represent the livestock industry on the grounds that so much livestock was carried on the railway. The rail freight charges and the accommodation entered so deeply into the success or failure of the livestock industry of this country that if you wanted a man who knew the livestock industry intimately you would want to get a man engaged in the trade. His value vanished if you said: "But you must get out of the livestock trade."
As the Deputy fully understands, the livestock industry is a dynamic thing. It is constantly changing. Sometimes it is fat stock. Sometimes it is store stock. It may be sheep or pigs. One of the essentials was to get somebody who was familiar with the changing pattern of trade and commerce in the country. I think there was a miller on the board. There was a technical transport man on the board. There was an engineer on the board but you had to get certain persons, if they were to be any use, who knew the industry from the point of view of the consumer.
I think there was a representative on the board who knew the business from the point of view of the trade unions. In fact, it was a composite board. It was designed to run the trade on behalf of the country with an intimate knowledge of the kind of trades it was serving bearing in mind it was a transport monopoly.
Major de Valera
Would the same not apply to television? Would you not want somebody on the board who would know something about television?
Of course.
Major de Valera
Is that not the nub of this problem?
Surely you do not have to be in the trade to know something about television?
Major de Valera
You do not have to be in the trade to know something about livestock.
I think you do, about the transport of livestock.
Television is more complicated.
Have we not the evidence of our own eyes? In America and Great Britain the people who operate and administer television are not engaged in the trade. They do not supply canned television programmes or components to the stations over which they preside. If you are presiding over a commercial station, which is your own property, the ordinary rules of business apply. The difficulty here is that we are creating a State monopoly.
What rather upsets me is that I note a tendency on the part of certain of our colleagues here to take up the position that if you make it all right by statute anything goes. I do not think that anything goes even if we passed a Bill to say it does. It is to dissuade Dáil Éireann from attempting by legislation to lower ethical standards that these amendments are put down. I appreciate that there is a difference between what is appropriate in ordinary commercial practice and what is appropriate in an organisation of this kind.
I agree with Deputy de Valera that you may find a situation which is probably represented by the transport situation in which you could not get a public board in which this standard could be maintained because, if you did, it must of its nature be an ineffective board in order to face that fact. There was much to be said for not nationalising transport for that very reason. The trouble was that if we did not do it at the time, the transport system would have broken down. You had to do the best you could but because you were forced by circumstances into accepting the situation in respect of the transport service is no reason why we should set it as a desirable standard in every case.
I think the parallel with section 7 of the Electricity Supply Board Act is very much closer because there a person who has an interest in electrical goods, the kind of things that the E.S.B. might ordinarily be expected to undertake themselves, is told to get rid of them. If adventitiously they come to him after appointment he must, within three months, divest himself of them. I think I can distinguish rationally between the situation in which the E.S.B. Act was designed, the situation for which this Television Bill is designed and the situation which had to be surmounted in connection with Coras Iompair Éireann.
I think it right to remind the House that the Act of 1950 was not the first Act we passed regarding the transport law. We tried every device human ingenuity could evolve in a succession of efforts to turn the transport monopoly into a self-supporting institution. My memory goes back further than that of Deputy Haughey. I can remember the happy days when the Minister for Industry and Commerce, the present Taoiseach, was introducing Bills into this House. He was legislating to turn the transport system of this country into a gold mine. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since these golden anticipations were confounded by the event. By the time we reached 1950, we would have put pink elephants on the board if we thought they could serve the purpose. We were more successful in 1950 than the present Taoiseach was in 1936.
I do not think there is a fair parallel to be drawn between these two cases nor do I think that the 1950 precedent is relevant to our present situation. I am quite sure you do not want someone involved in the trade to be on the television Authority. I think it is certainly possible to get nine people, men or women, who would have no connection with the trade at all and who would be eminently suitable to operate an Authority of this kind. I could imagine the Authority, consisting of nine detached and impartial persons, getting expert advice from any number of people involved in the trade. There is nothing to restrict their discretion in getting expert advice from any source they think expedient. That is within their discretion. All this amendment seeks to provide is that they themselves will in respect of the Authority be as Caesar's wife—above suspicion. I cannot help feeling that most of the Deputies on the other side of the House fundamentally agree with us. I always welcome an opportunity of giving a demonstration in this House of the noble process of reason prevailing. This is a vindication of a very valuable principle and we should vindicate its usefulness by honest debate in this sovereign Legislature of Ireland.
Major de Valera
When I replied "public company" in answer to Deputy Dr. Browne, I meant in the section in which it is used in the Companies Act. I did not mean a public undertaking. I may have misrepresented a section by saying that under this Schedule of the Companies Act a man could be a director of two companies. No. I note that the word used is "member". That might mean a shareholder. But I also note it is common in articles of association to have just that.
I was about to deal with that point. I think Deputy de Valera was under the misapprehension, as I was, in referring to it as a State company. Consequently I was about to say that Deputy de Valera made two important points; one is valid and the other invalid. On the second point, in regard to the 1950 Transport Act and the fact that the principle about which we are talking here was violated, I think we have established that. I think he should concede it as I concede it. Inasmuch as I had responsibility in the formulation of that Act at the time, I accept it. I think it was bad at that time to have done that.
If the principle we are making here is that we must have the State company above reproach, I do not think one can make exceptions on foot of the arguments advanced by Deputy Dillon—the necessity for having an expert on livestock as a member of the board. If that is so, all the arguments put by the Minister apropos the proposed chairman are equally valid, that the proposed chairman is an expert in a particular field and justifies his place on the board. May I say in regard to that that I think the 1927 Act was a fine piece of legislation, not only in its end product but in its respect for the principle we are discussing?
All of us recognise that one of the tributes the Minister has paid to the principle is in the admission that there has been no breath of scandal associated with the activities of this company as long as it has been operating. That, to a considerable extent, can, it is true, be attributed to the personnel but as well as anything else, it is due to the principle under which they have operated. For that reason I am particularly concerned to try to retain it in this piece of legislation.
I regret very much the question of a personality being introduced. We are, as Deputy de Valera suggested, discussing this whole section in a situation in which an individual is interwoven with a principle. That is most undesirable and it is a great pity that it should happen. As far as I am concerned the individual is a magnificent artist; there is no question about that at all. It seems to me that the only worthwhile programmes on the B.B.C. are those produced by him, even those he operates for the children's service. He is an outstanding personality. At the same time it is unfortunate that the name has become involved in this discussion.
The trouble then arises that when one is criticising the service one tends to appear to be criticising an individual, which I certainly do not wish to do. The Minister is establishing a rather dangerous line, I suggest, in saying that this man happens to be a first class artist and so should be the chairman. He over-simplifies the problem. Everyone could concede that, if at the same time we had not to admit that he is also a business man, financially associated with this particular medium which we are discussing. We are not then solely concerned with his talents and qualifications as an artist. We are concerned with his business interests from now on and the principle here would seem to be that we are taking a particular service, television, and the suggestion is that because this man is a magnificent artist we shall put him in charge and close our eyes to the fact that he has at the same time financial and business interests in the same industry.
I think that if we took that line we would veer dangerously towards the vocational conception of Government. For instance, Mr. Paddy Lynch is a first class administrator and obviously Are Lingus is very safe in his hands. But if we had decided to appoint Mr. Lynch to Aer Lingus because of his record, for instance, with B.O.A.C., if he had one, and three or four other private air companies in other countries, and asked him, because of his experience, to take over the running of a new company, Aer Lingus, and said at the same time: "You may, as well as running Aer Lingus, keep your interests in B.O.A.C., S.A.S., Pan American Airways and any other interests you happen to have; because you are an expert we need you so badly we shall take you even under those conditions", it seems to me that that would a most undesirable thing. We could apply the same case to Mr. Todd Andrews who is a magnificent administrator in control of C.I.E.
He is a good man for closing down branch lines anyway.
However, he is a magnificent administrator. We shall discuss that another time as I have an interest in his most recent closing down proposal, with which I strongly disagree. He has a great record as an administrator. In C.I.E. he has obviously taken over a very difficult job but it would be unthinkable that at the same time he should be allowed, pari passu with his present job, to run other private transport concerns. The same applies to Lieutenant-General Costello, another magnificent administrator. It would be unthinkable that as well as running Comhlucht Siúicre he should be allowed to have an interest in Tate and Lyle, or whatever sugar companies there are. I do not think we would be completely happy about that.
We are in the position that we are now discussing a piece of legislation put before us to facilitate an individual. I think we must all accept that now. If the 1950 Transport Act had been put forward to me in the Cabinet as a piece of legislation designed to facilitate the appointment of a person because he had a knowledge of transport and at the same time had similar business interests, I think I would have fought the Bill at the time. I cannot recollect whether I did or did not oppose it then. I think it is a precedent which should not be allowed to be established that we accept the expert with a vested interest, a business or financial interest, in his particular expertise or profession.
Of course we have the position of the Minister for Health at the moment who is presented with a problem by the Irish Medical Association who assure him they are the experts in their field and they have a vested interest. Surely it would be unthinkable at the same time to let them run the Department of Health. The same applies to the National Farmers' Association and the Department of Agriculture or the case of the I.N.T.O. running the Department of Education. There are various other proposals of that nature which I think the Minister would readily repudiate in those instances and reject. It is precisely the same underlying principle here. I think it is a humiliating position for any Government. The Minister has said we should not restrict the Government. It is not we who have restricted the Government. It is a particular individual who appears to have restricted the Government and he has given us to understand that we can have his undoubted talents but at a particular price. I think it would be a pity if the Government allowed itself to be put into a position where it must accept certain terms from an individual, however talented.
Progress reported: Committee to sit again.