Before I reported progress I had been making the point that Deputies should resist the temptation to use the occasion of this Estimate simply as a vehicle to carry their prejudices about particular programmes on Telefís Éireann; that this would be an abuse of this occasion; that we should all attempt to debate broad policy items in the Estimate and consider, in relation to the television station, how it fulfils its functions and whether it is best performing those functions.
I made the point last night that our television station has always lived in a climate of pressure from Government quarters and that, in its lifetime, it has known only one party in Government and has become accustomed to that kind of surveillance on its activities as a television station. In a country where there is only one television station, set up by Act of Parliament, there would always be a tension between the television station and the Government. There probably is a greater degree of tension in the relations between that station and the Government presently in power. That Government set up the station and, over the years, at one time or another, has considered Montrose as absolutely the property of the Government, as simply another semi-State agency, requiring no different treatment from that meted out to any other State agency.
If we are to ensure conditions of free expression, to ensure that people get a television service which gives them the news and the information behind the news, that provides adult television programmes, and that is able to provide a means of livelihood for its employees who will be unafraid—and in Telefís Éireann at the moment there are a number of people who are very frightened indeed—and if we are to ensure that we would get a station which allows people to produce programmes which are honest in their production and in the intentions, we need healthy competition; we need to create a second television station.
I am suggesting that Telefís Éireann as at present constituted—and this problem is referred to in the Minister's speech—is an uneasy compromise between commercial considerations and what are referred to as "considerations of public policy". When we demand of the one television station programmes of high quality, programmes which do not depend for their production on purely commercial considerations, and at the same time ask the station to pay its way, we are asking the impossible. It would seem to me that we should separate these two functions. Let us have a purely commercial television station. Let it be financed by, say, the newspapers. The newspapers have been complaining of the supremacy of television in recent years in communications and so on. We should allow a frankly commercial television station to come into existence and, from the revenue of that station, subsidise a second station that need not totally depend on commercial considerations, which would not necessarily be a highbrow station but which would be able, at least, to consider the production of more quality programmes on public affairs, drama, and all the matters that interest various people.
The commercial station such as I have referred to, in line with commercial stations in Britain and elsewhere, could have a healthy public affairs section. The competition between the two stations would ensure that the needless Government interference which has proceeded in the case of Telefís Éireann would occur less frequently. The Minister in his introductory statement referred to the directive to RTE under section 31 in the following terms:
I issued a written direction to the Authority on 1st October, 1971, "to refrain from broadcasting any matter of the following class i.e. any matter that could be calculated to promote the aims or activities of any organisation which engages in, promotes, encourages or advocates the attaining of any particular objective by violent means.
The Minister mentioned that this was the first time the directive was ever given in that form. This is true. Over the years the customary manner in which Ministerial directives were given has been by phone, suggesting that such and such an item should not be on a news programme. We recall the instances over the years. The advantage of giving one's direction by phone is that the patient shows no sign of the punishment administered. It is a kind of third degree which leaves no trace. The Minister's directive at least has the advantage over these midnight phone calls, which had been the method adopted by previous Ministers for giving directives to Telefís Éireann —that it was given openly. If censorship is to be invoked I am in favour of the public knowing the date, the hour and the minute when that censorship was invoked.
That does not mean that I defend or am in favour of that particular directive by the Minister. If we have legislation which lays down a certain approach to illegal organisations, the burden is on the public authorities to utilise that legislation. I cannot see why Telefís Éireann must be used as a kind of shabby second guarantor to carry out public policy which the Government themselves, evidently, shy away from. If the Government party have an ambivalent attitude, and I think they have an ambivalent attitude, to illegal organisations I do not see why they should visit that ambivalence on Telefís Éireann and ask people whose duty it is to carry news and to explain the news, the journalists in Telefís Éireann, to carry out this kind of ambiguous directive:
"to refrain from broadcasting any matter of the following class i.e. any matter that could be calculated to promote the aims or activities of any organisation which engages in, promotes, encourages or advocates the attaining of any particular objective by violence."
This is a very broad and vague directive. It is calculated further to discourage people in Telefís Éireann from reporting news honestly. Are we going to stand over a state of affairs where, for example, the news bulletins of Telefís Éireann carry violent activities in Belfast at weekends, and so on, and where the feature programmers are given instructions that they must not explain the origin of these actions, in other words, our news bulletins carry the shooting but the feature programmes can carry no explanations, and, at the same time, our newspapers report the news as it happens. If this Government have an argument with illegal organisations then it must have the moral courage to pursue that argument both here in Parliament and on political platforms around the country, and it must not seek to evade that duty by passing on a vaguely worded directive to RTE in an attempt to corral journalists into curtailing their professional activities in reporting the news honestly and impartially. As I see it, that is the job of Telefís Éireann and the primary duty of any journalist.
It is their primary duty to report what is actually happening and comment on the basic facts that explain this event or that event. The Government, of course, have been attempting to frighten independent journalists in RTE over a number of years. The great monument erected to that particular policy was, in fact, the "7 Days" Tribunal. They have been attempting to inculcate into RTE what I would describe as a school of auto-censorship, in which the journalist himself censors himself; in which the station, because of so many mysterious directives coming from so many Government Ministers, would appear to exist solely for the benefit of the one party in government over the past ten years, becoming simply a place in which there would be harmless programmes from the point of view of the Government, whether home-produced or otherwise, and, if not home-produced, canned film programmes from America and Britain.
The Government have been attempting to make of Telefís Éireann a harmless "bread and circuses" kind of show and drive it away from commentary on public affairs, frightening them with vague directives so that no programmes with an honest content could, in fact, be produced, leaving us, the viewers, finally with a station which carries no honest commentary on any matter of any interest whatever. Well and truly might people object that, for their licence fees, they are not getting value and, so long as this heavy-handed approach by the Government persists in relation to Telefís Éireann, they will not get that value. I suggest one way in which we could break the vicious circle would be by the establishment of a second television station. I would hope that, if we get to that stage, we could examine the authority of RTE and ensure that, in nominations to that authority, there would be a 50-50 split of representation. Is there not greater scope for nomination of representatives to RTE?
We hear the complaint that RTE has no direct contact with vocational organisations. It is easy to see how this may come about. We are not alone in having a Government which is anxious to curtail the freedom of expression and the content of expression: Italy and France are good examples of how Governments may manage their television stations to ensure they do not give honest expression to news and so on. Let us admit it: one good reason why Telefís Éireann has been able to operate a tradition of free commentary has been because of the proximity of this island to that of Britain. Unfortunately, at the moment, the BBC is under grave strain in reporting Northern Ireland events and Tory Ministers are suggesting, in the interests of patriotism, to British journalists that they must report the British Army in a certain light. As I say, we are not alone in this drive towards greater control of the news. It is not an exaggeration to say there have been signs over the last year or two; there was the recent attempt, the Forcible Entry Bill, to curtail freedom of expression. We may see in the tendency in Britain now a similar approach to contain freedom of expression by journalists on BBC programmes.
I think RTE has attempted honestly to report events in Northern Ireland. There has been a bias on occasion admittedly, but the Northern Ireland tragedy is one in which we are all caught up emotionally and it is hard to report objectively. I think this recent direction, in which section 31 of the Act was invoked by the Minister, must make RTE's attempt to cover the Northern Ireland situation impartially much more difficult. The two objectives RTE must be permitted to carry out are to report the facts and explain the background to those facts. The big problem will come up soon as to how exactly RTE will report the referendum campaign. Who is to know whether RTE is not to receive further ministerial directives? A Minister has altered custom. He has, in fact, invoked Article 31 and there is no guarantee that, over that campaign, ministerial directives about particular programmes may not again be utilised and producers of programmes told that this or that should not be shown. In the climate of fear in RTE at present this may very well prove to be successful. In the reporting of the referendum campaign RTE will have a very heavy responsibility to carry out in informing the public on the issues involved.
There will always be in any democracy a permanent tension—it is a good thing for democracy that there should be this tension—between the public authorities and RTE. Obviously representatives of the Government do not appreciate that this tension is one of the conditions of democracy, however awkward it may be to relieve. We know the Tánaiste's approach. He wants happy news. The answer to his necessity for happy news is that his own party has probably been the begetter of some of the unhappiest news in this State over the past two years and it has produced programmes of the most gory kind for the reporting of which RTE cannot be blamed; if the Tánaiste wants happy news, he must admit his own party was not, in fact, providing its own measure of happy news.
The Minister mentioned the new radio station to be set up in the Gaeltacht. The establishment of this radio station is praiseworthy, but it is regrettable that the opportunity was not taken, when setting up this regional Gaeltacht station, to appoint people to that authority from, say, organisations like Cearta Sibhialta na Gaeltachta. Cearta Sibhialta na Gaeltachta has done a great deal to increase people's appreciation of their cultural identity. It has done many worthwhile things in the Gaeltacht in Connemara. It is regrettable that no representative of that organisation or other organisations who have called for a Gaeltacht radio station over the years has been appointed to the Radio na Gaeltachta Authority. I accept that a public authority which sets up a station such as Radio na Gaeltachta must have some control over the administrative running of that station, but could we not have a more imaginative way of involving local interests in the running of that station? All RTE appointments are in the hands of the Minister. As far as Radio na Gaeltachta is concerned one can almost say all those appointed are members of the Fianna Fáil Party. This is a regrettable method of proceeding.