Before I invite the representatives of Viridian to make their presentation, I wish to inform the joint committee that the three members of the delegation sanctioned by it to travel to Australia and Singapore — Deputy Kehoe, Senator Kenneally and I — have arrived home safely. The World Energy Conference in Sydney was of tremendous help to the members of the delegation and will certainly help us in our deliberations on the energy market. We held a number of sidebar meetings during the conference with delegates from different parts of the world and were particularly interested in New Zealand's regulatory framework.
Not content with just the World Energy Conference, we also held a meeting with the Screen Producers Association of Australia to discuss the broadcasting fund which has been established by the Government to be distributed by the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland. As members know, the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland, BCI, is undertaking public consultation on the disbursement of the fund. The delegation learned a tremendous amount from its meeting with the screen producers. We also went to see the Australian equivalent of RTE in Sydney, SPF, to discuss the funding of public broadcasting. That session will be of immense interest to the committee in the context of our meeting with RTE later in the year.
There has been much talk of our long drive to the Hunter Valley. I acknowledge that we have Ronald Quinlan from Ireland on Sunday present to continue his writing on the subject. We invited him to attend especially today to enable him to record some of the facts of our visit to the Rio Tinto mine which is owned by Coal and Allied, one of Australia’s and probably the world’s largest mining operations. The visit was very important to the committee and the work was undertaken on a Saturday. As politicians work seven days a week, we had no difficulty with that. The tour of the ten square mile open mining process was very important to the committee to see how the operation deals with tailing ponds and other environmental matters. As members will be aware, we have been visited by groups from the Silvermines in Tipperary and officials from the Department to discuss how it will deal with the environmental hazard at that site which has not been dealt with over the last 15 years. The committee will be pleased to know that we will be able to offer a number of solutions to the Department and the Silvermines Action Group when we discuss the matter at a future meeting.
The delegation was involved with Enterprise Ireland in arranging a very important meeting between an Australian telecommunications company and an Irish software company which sells its products on the world market. While the negotiations went quite well, they are sensitive and I will not mention the companies' names.
The delegation travelled to Canberra, the Australian capital, to meet Mr. Simon Bryant, general manager of the telecommunications, competition and consumer section of the Department of Communications, to discuss the roll-out of broadband and mobile telephony regulations. The delegation also held a meeting with the Department's broadcasting division on the way it administers the Australian broadcasting fund. The details will be of immense interest to the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland.
The delegation held a meeting with the international fisheries section of the Department of Agriculture to discuss the experiences and difficulties Australians have in fishing their own waters. The delegation then travelled to Singapore where we had a meeting with the Minister with responsibility for communications, Mr. Yatiman Yusof. An important exchange of views on broadband, information and communications technology and mobile telephony took place. Most members will be aware that Singapore is one of the most advanced countries in the world in terms of information and communications technology. The delegation also had a meeting with the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore which is responsible for regulation and development to discuss content and the future use of telephones. We were able to advise the body of a number Irish companies which continue to develop software to deal with pornography and advanced systems to allow people to make purchases from their mobile telephones. We met with SingTel, a mobile telephone operator which was able to provide us with facts and figures on charges which is a subject of immense interest to this committee. I put the three domestic mobile telephony operators on notice that we will meet them in the very near future to discuss their charges.
On our worthwhile trip to Australia and Singapore we discussed the roll-out of 3G, mobile phones, broadband and e-government and our findings will be very helpful to the committee in the current module on energy and other modules in the future.
