asked the Minister for Communications if he will give details of the agreement on advertising which is being sought between different elements of the media.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Agreement on Advertising.
8.
I would refer the Deputy to my speech of 20 October 1987 made on the occasion of the Power of the Press Advertising Awards in which I indicated that I had established formal ongoing contact between representatives of the print media and RTE to deal with matters of mutual concern with respect to advertising market share. My role was solely that of an intermediary aimed at creating a formalised liaison between the interested parties. The terms of any agreement which may arise is a matter to be worked out by the parties themselves.
Will the Minister comment on what he had in mind when he suggested that statutory action might be taken if agreement was not reached? Does he feel his proposals for commercial radio and television will affect the agreement towards which he was urging the parties?
Obviously the arrival of a legal régime for radio in this country and the considerations of an independent television, if that is so decided, will have an effect. The print media have a very special role in our lives, in the information they supply to the general public. They have a very complementary role to the electronic media. I would not like to see the balance between the amount of advertising the print media receive and that received by the electronic media going so far out of kilter that it could damage the future of the print media. As far as the legislative proposals are concerned, proposals were made in Holland in regard to relationships between the electronic and the print media. However, I do not see myself or the Government going down that road of regulation of advertising. That should be left to the commercial world but I would like to see a balance. The meetings that have already taken place between RTE and the national newspapers in Ireland have already resulted in some successes. For example, there has been an alteration in the type of promotional programmes that were done. We have the example of a car being given as a prize to a particular programme and that, in turn, was an advertisment of the car or holiday or whatever. That practice has now been stopped, and rightly so, and that arose out of the discussions between the newspapers and RTE. That is the type of tidying up I want to see happening.
The Minister says he is concerned about the industry. Is he concerned about the consumer? Is he concerned about the recent increase of 10 per cent in the price of daily newspapers? Has the Minister any view on that matter?
That is a separate question.
It comes under the media and advertising.
There is a problem in reaching a balance between the print media and television media. Is it not so that one of the problems in television advertising from outside the State, notably that on Independent television, and that this is something that must also be taken into the reckoning with the tax regime of newspapers? Is the Minister giving any consideration to those aspects of this problem?
This is a widening of the scope of this question.
The tax question would be for the Minister for Finance. Advertising coming in on the piped stations is, again, another problem.
Will the Minister make sure that whatever agreement is worked out will apply to the new operators of radio and television when they come on stream?
It would be one of the matters I would obviously be concerned about.