Amendments Nos. 48, 64 and 70 may be taken together.
Broadcasting Authority (Amendment) Bill, 1975: Committee Stage (Resumed).
SECTION 4.
I move amendment No. 48.
In page 6, lines 38 to 41, to delete subsection (11).
This amendment relates to the provisions of section 6 of the Bill. Subsection (11) on page 6 that I seek to delete from the Bill by this amendment is one which provides that the programmes of the BBC which the Minister proposes to instruct RTE to broadcast will not be amenable to the activities of the broadcasting complaints commission.
The Minister already said on section 3 in relation to an amendment of mine that he is not prepared to lay down in the Bill any instructions covering the programmes of the BBC, that it would be impossible to do. One can see that problems would arise. In this case we are in a different situation. I would suggest that there would be a great deal of advantage to be had both from the Minister's and everybody else's point of view if the broadcasting complaints commission were to be empowered to keep an eye on the potential broadcasts from the BBC which will be retransmitted by RTE. If the Minister were to accept this amendment it would be very easy to add some additional clauses not covered in this amendment, but if the Minister were to accept this amendment it would be very easy to add some additional clauses to this, admittedly, already long section on Report Stage.
If the Minister were to accept this amendment we would have the situation that the complaints would be made to the broadcasting complaints commission on foot of programmes of the BBC. It might well be that without having specific complaints being made to the broadcasting complaints commission there would be great advantage in having them oversee these programmes and, perhaps, have them issue an annual or bi-annual report on the programmes as they appear to them, in particular in relation to the various duties laid upon RTE in section 3.
At the moment we have the situation under this Bill that the BBC can broadcast or, at least, authorise RTE to rebroadcast their programmes. Nobody has any control over them at all—the Minister, the Government or anybody else. Nobody is in any position to keep an eye on these programmes and to inform the public in a sort of statistical way as to what type of programmes they have been, what problems may have arisen under them, the lack of bias, impartiality or objectivity that may have been seen in some or all of these programmes. The obvious people to do this kind of job would appear to be the broadcasting complaints commission, so I would suggest that the Minister would be very wise to accept this amendment in order to ensure that at least to some extent there would be some element of public supervision over the broadcasting of BBC in Ireland.
This amendment if accepted would have the effect of including in the functions of the complaints commission the powers to investigate breaches of RTE's statutory obligations in regard to objectivity and impartiality and so on, in respect of rebroadcast programmes over which RTE would have no editorial control. That appears to me to be self-evidently absurd and I cannot possibly accept it. If, however, what the Senator means to say is that people should have a right to complain about rebroadcasts, that the complaints should be received and studied, I would agree with that. I would even say that if the volume of complaints was substantial, the matters commented on were grave in the view of the complaints commission, any Minister would then give consideration to the question of whether this should be continued.
I do not anticipate that arising because I take note of the fact that some Senators seem to disregard that about half of the population receive BBC, nobody keeps an eye on those programmes, the process is just going on. Such complaints as tend to come in concern the quality of reception and the desirability of improving this. So I would not anticipate any great volume of complaints, but I certainly cannot accept an amendment which would include in the functions of the complaints commission the power to investigate breaches of RTE's statutory obligations in regard to a matter over which they have no control at all. That cannot possibly be done.
I see the difficulty the Minister has outlined. It seems to be another example of the situation in which we are hedging in our own service more and more with safeguards, with directives not to broadcast this, to broadcast that and so on. Then we rebroadcast BBC without let or hindrance, with no control over what they broadcast, no directives, no comeback or feedback. I do not see that what the Minister said will, in fact, happen. If there are lots of complaints about the BBC programmes they will be made to the complaints commission and a Minister for Posts and Telegraphs may take that into account. It means there is no obligation on anybody to take the thing into account. It will just give the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs a carte blanche in this respect.
As the Minister knows, I have been unhappy about the proposal which is to be discussed in section 6 which is, in my mind, the key to the whole Bill. The spirit of Senator Yeats' amendment is right and I support it. I see the difficulty but it is another example of putting our own service in a straitjacket which may or may not be necessary. We are putting some substantial controls on our own service and then we are about to broadcast, over our own network, a British channel and we essentially have no feedback. It is entirely up to the Minister whether he takes the public feeling into account, to stop that service coming in at any time.
At the moment there would not be much divergence of opinion on essential issues between here and Britain, but I can see a situation arising, unfortunately much sooner than most of us think, when there are likely to be very serious divergences of opinion on fundamental issues involving Northern Ireland. I do not know what the Minister feels about this projected situation. Having spent a period of time in Northern Ireland recently, I feel that we are approaching some sort of desperate crisis. In that situation whereby there could be very severe restrictions on RTE and then over the national network to just rebroadcast everything the BBC says which possibly would be totally at variance with what our Government are likely to be saying, would be just crazy.
I support the spirit of Senator Yeats' amendment. As he said, something could be done by adding extra clauses to a section which has so many clauses it is almost impossible to understand it as it is. A few extra ones will not make it very much more complicated to give some statutory way of providing the complaints commission with a function vis-à-vis the BBC rebroadcast as they have vis-à-vis our own national programmes.
The Minister seems to think we are all very innocent. He says, as if to settle the matter, that he has not heard of complaints against the BBC programmes as at present watched by the people on the east coast. Who is going to write to the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs to complain about a BBC programme which, due to their geographical position, they happen to see on their television set? I doubt if anybody would even write to the BBC.
A totally different situation arises if the Minister succeeds in his plan— I would almost say "plot"—as laid out in section 6 of this Bill, and the BBC programmes are transmitted at the expense of the Irish taxpayer and licence holder, and by Irish transmitters operated by the Irish RTE Authority. This would be our own action laid on for us by our own Government, paid for by our own people, and immediately a different situation arises. People have never bothered to complain to BBC about their lack of objectivity and impartiality in Irish affairs. I should think it highly probable that people will write in and complain about their sneering and superior attitudes to Irish people as a whole. The Minister said that in this event we could stop rebroadcasting.
What is the purpose of section 4? This section is more than four pages long. I suspect it is the longest section that has ever been in any Bill before us. It is the longest section I can ever remember seeing. It is extraordinarily complex, as Senator West has said, and it is very difficult to follow. There is a vast amount of verbiage in it. What has been the purpose of this? It is simply because the Minister has felt that it is not satisfactory to leave a situation where people can write to the Minister and complain about RTE. He is to set up with all this immensely complex verbiage a broadcasting complaints commission to hear such complaints.
His attitude with regard to RTE is that the Minister is not a satisfactory vehicle for the receipt of complaints of this kind. There have not been many complaints but it is probable that there will be more complaints about the individual programmes of the BBC. Yet the Minister says cheerfully: "Well, I am always there, and people can write to the Minister". But in his own Bill he admits that this is unsatisfactory. This enormous section 4 is to provide for this independent commission, yet it will only apply, as so much else in the Bill, to RTE: those foreign programmes are to be completely omitted from it.
I accept that my amendment, as it stands, would not wholly meet the requirements of dealing with BBC broadcasts. Therefore, I propose on Report Stage, to draft something more elaborate which would set up the broadcasting complaints commission in some kind of supervisory capacity to receive complaints with regard to BBC broadcasts in the event of their ever starting, to consider whether they are justified and from time to time to make recommendations to the Minister arising out of this situation. That is a very minimum. I do not regard it as satisfactory when it seems to be the very minimum that the situation requires. Therefore, I am not pressing this amendment, but I give notice that I will certainly put down an amendment on the lines I suggested for Report Stage.
It seems to me that part of the problem relating to the amendment, which I am glad Senator Yeats is not going to press, is due to the schizophrenia to which the Minister has referred in relation to the reception of BBC. It is that people approach it as if half the country were not already receiving BBC 1 and 2, HTV and UTV. In relation to the Broadcasting complaints commission, as I would understand it, their function is, in relation to the Broadcasting Authority established by statute, by this Parliament, and would obviously deal with alleged breaches of the statutory obligations imposed on the Authority. They cannot be expected to deal with broadcasting authorities established by statute in other Parliaments.
It would seem to me that the analogy would be that we would establish a press council which would not only have relevance to Irish newspapers but would also be able to take to task Le Figaro or the London Times or Die Welt and that we would write letters telling them that they had written of us or presented us in an unfavourable way and that they had better be careful about it in the future. There is a touch of the Skibbereen Eagle about all this. We must not import into this legislation our own jaundiced view of our neighbours. This is coming through particularly from Senator Yeats.
I cannot distinguish any difference between the reception of a BBC 1 programme through cable put into a house by Irish technicians and that programme being kept in that house by RTE and the same programme being sent by microwave on a transmitter network and being received in Cork. There is a confusion here between the technology and the message. The message is no different. The technology is different and yet we seem to think that the change in technology somehow changes the message which is then being transmitted on the medium. This is something I cannot understand. I cannot understand the difference between RTE Relays putting a programme into my house and leaving it there without any reference to the broadcasting complaints commission and at the same time the programme being suddenly transformed into something metaphysically different because it is sent on a transmitter network and therefore it must be referred to the broadcasting complaints commission, if there is some complaint about it. The attitude of outside broadcasting authorities would be "If you have a complaint about our programmes, do not look at them. We are not asking you to look at them. If you do not like our newspapers do not buy them". The purpose of the broadcasting complaints commission is to deal with breaches of legislation established under the authority of this Parliament alone.
I want to support the amendment, but what seems self-evident is that it has already been decided to provide a second channel by the Government. It also seems to have been decided that this second channel will be in operation because, so far as I am aware, the sites have been chosen in Longford at Two Rock Mountain. It is already on the mind of the Government and it is going to happen.
We are discussing amendments regarding this but, as far as I can see, the decision seems to have been taken and that it is BBC only we will have. This may have resulted because of pressure by certain groups here and West Briton groups, language freedom movements and other people who represent a very small minority of the population who are trying to put their views across. I am sure we all realise that there would be legal difficulties in this, but I do not think any nation would hand over——
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
We are not discussing section 6. We are on Senator Yeats' amendment.
I am discussing the proposed complaints commission.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
We are dealing with an amendment dealing with the complaints commission and not with the setting up——
I disagree with your ruling but I appreciate that. I also realise that in discussing that amendment reference has been made to the effect that this amendment will have.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
The amendment before us is relevant to what the broadcasting complaints commission might or might not do.
I have been discussing the broadcasting complaints commission's function. I understood from previous speakers that this commission would have some function in passing judgment on the type of programmes that would be broadcast from an outside station. I was adverting also to the fact that we were handing over to some outside authority the right to come in here and broadcast to us ad lib anything that they felt was needed to bolster their method of propaganda and that we have no comeback whatever on that. It may be all right for the Minister to smile in so far as these things are concerned. I want to assure him that a large section of the community feel that he is 100 per cent bent on doing this irrespective of how it is discussed here. The image the country would have of him is one who would like to hand over all to the British authority, which eventually will happen if this broadcasting complaints commission are established as proposed and if section 6 goes through. To think that after centuries of struggle we should hand over to any outside authority the right to come into our country and broadcast their propaganda and that we would have no complaints commission——
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
The Senator is aware that we are dealing with amendment No. 48 to section 4?
Is he aware that the amendment has been withdrawn by Senator Yeats?
Not yet.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
It has not actually been withdrawn and he is quite entitled to debate it, but I wish that he would relate his remarks to section 4, amendment No. 48.
The amendment has not been withdrawn.
No, not yet.
I was merely making the point on the amendment that some teeth should be given to the broadcasting complaints commission to ensure that they, in some way, would be able to censor the type of tripe we know BBC will broadcast as soon as the green light is given to them to take over our broadcasting system, after the fight that was made for generations to set it up and establish an individuality of our own. No nation, especially no nation like ours, should attempt to do such a thing.
Has the Senator got BBC or UTV or the other stations available to him in his area?
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
This is not a question and answer session.
I should like to refer to something Senator Halligan said when he made the analogy about the Press Council. As far as I can see, that analogy fails because we do not have a Government newspaper. If we had a Government newspaper and if Britain had one as well would we decide to reprint their Government newspaper and distribute it? This may sound unlikely but it does happen in a number of countries not so far away that the press is rigidly controlled by the Government. The whole point of this dispute lies in the fact that we, through our Government agency, are transmitting the programmes of another Government. Only a tiny fraction of the programmes originate in Northern Ireland. So Senator Halligan's analogy fails. Of course a Press Council here would not be expected to vet the British press, because the British press is not a Government controlled press. It comes in under private enterprise. Our own press is a private enterprise press and therefore we do not have Government control. Here we are putting controls on our own broadcasting service and we are, through our own Government agency, rebroadcasting the service of another Government without let or hindrance.
It is not a question of confusing the technology. It is a question of whether we are mature enough to select programmes from BBC or other agencies and rebroadcast them. If they were so select they would come under section 4, which deals with the broadcasting complaints commission and the complex machinery set out in section 4 which we have been discussing would apply to them; but, as it stands, in section 6 this will not happen. That is the situation. It is not a question of confusion and it is not a question of a jaundiced view of our neighbour.
A type of tripe.
I am not answering for Senator Dolan. I am talking about my own position. I know Senator Halligan has some views on independence himself. He even thinks we ought to be independent from the £ sterling and I happen to agree with him.
It is a matter of economics.
It is, but at least we keep control of the matter ourselves. I can see the warning finger. It is not just a simple matter of technology or an analogy with the Press Council. It is more subtle and we should have exactly the same controls on any service we broadcast over the national network as we have over our own service. I am glad Senator Yeats is going to put down a more complicated and more subtle amendment on Report Stage to try and hedge in any rebroadcast service and get it within the ambit of the broadcasting complaints commission.
I do not propose to deal with the matters raised by Senator Halligan which really had, in most cases, no relation to the amendment but related to section 6. I tried with varying degrees of success to avoid dealing with section 6. On the whole I have been fairly abstemious. I do not propose to follow up what Senator Halligan said. He inspired others to follow him on the same course. I do not intend to follow him. We have ample opportunity on section 6 to deal with these matters. For the moment I am willing to withdraw this amendment but, quite clearly, some element of supervision will be needed in the event that BBC programmes are transmitted by our television station.
I am glad Senator Yeats is withdrawing this amendment and I should like to assure him that I will give careful consideration to what he may suggest on Report Stage. I would also thank him for being, as he said, abstemious in relation to premature consumption of section 6. He has taken a sip or two but I do not blame him for that.
There are some points Senator West made which I should like to take up. He said we have no control over the situation if we rebroadcast BBC. This is not correct. We retain the control in our hands to rebroadcast or to stop rebroadcasting. I agree with the Senator that circumstances might conceivably arise where in time of emergency such rebroadcasting might not be desirable. The Senator would have to bear in mind that, even in those conditions of emergency, half the population would still be receiving BBC. If in an emergency it was thought desirable not to continue rebroadcasting, then the Government of the day would stop rebroadcasting and could do it immediately. So there is no abandonment of sovereignty or control. It will be rebroadcast if we choose to rebroadcast it. It will not be rebroadcast if we, for our own good reasons, decide not to rebroadcast it. This is a very basic point. I share the Senator's very deep concern about certain possibilities which may arise but which it would be out of order to dwell on here. I should like to assure him that nothing that is being done in this Bill would in any way prejudice our position in relation to such an emergency. That is not the case at all.
There were two suggestions made which I think are extraordinary. Senator West wondered whether I take the public feeling into account at all. Senator Dolan said that only a tiny minority would favour this Bill. I do not know whether either of these Senators ever spent much time with the people in areas which can only receive RTE.
I live there.
The Senator cannot listen very much.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
We are on amendment No. 48.
I take the ruling. We can come back to that. I would say that, far from listening to a small minority, the people I am paying attention to are the voices reaching me from the single-channel areas and no others.
I should like to make two points because the Minister has very courteously replied to two things I said. On the point about taking opinion into account, perhaps I phrased that badly. What I meant was to follow up Senator Yeats' point. Will people who feel strongly about BBC write to our Minister for Posts and Telegraphs? The simple answer is that he will not get these opinions. The only way you can influence the BBC is by writing to the BBC. Anything you say to the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs will have no effect. That is what I meant. Of course Ministers have to take public opinion into account.
That is a different thing, incidentally, from giving people what they want, which is not my function as a legislator. People do not want their income tax raised but we have got to do it every year. There are all these analogies. I should like to rephrase my statement that the Minister is not taking public opinion into account. I recognise the fact that there is a considerable demand for not just one British channel but all four channels. The public ought to be clear they will not get them. They will only get one. There is an overbearing argument for a selection of programmes.
The other point was the problem of control. Of course, we have the possibility of turning the tap off just as we have the possibility of turning it on. We should recognise our own maturity and we should have a stricter control. Our control should be by selection which would bring everything under the ambit of section 4 of this Bill and all programmes would then come under the scrutiny of the complaints commission. The extra channel should consist of a selection of programmes. The sort of control you exert by turning the tap on and turning it off is a very weak form of control because, as the Minister has said, and as he must recognise, to actually stop broadcasting a service once you have started it, is a very difficult political decision to make, even if the situation is desperately critical, as I fear the situation will become. If we are really talking about realistic control we should be talking about a control exercised by Irish people on the selection of programmes. How one does it is a matter of judgment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
I move amendment No. 49:
In page 6, line 43, to delete "which is withdrawn or".
This relates to subsection (12) of section 4 of the Bill. Subsection (12) in effect says that the commission shall not consider a complaint which is withdrawn or which in their opinion is frivolous or vexatious. Obviously the commission must have the power to consider that any particular complaint is frivolous or vexatious. I make no point about that at all. I am a little worried about the question of a complaint which is withdrawn. The danger here is that there might be pressures put on someone who has made a complaint. Say, for example, a complaint is in relation to a breach of the code of advertising, who knows what economic or financial pressures there might be on some individual who had made his complaint to withdraw it? It should be left to the commission to decide in such case.
In most cases, I imagine, if a complaint is made and then withdrawn, the commission will have no trouble in deciding if it is frivolous or vexatious. If it is a serious complaint, one which has substance, once it has come before them the commission ought to be empowered to deal with it, if they see fit, even though it may have been withdrawn. There could be pressures on the people who made the complaint. In such a case it would be in the public interest that the commission should still have the power, if they wish, to consider the complaint.
I must say I had been inclined to reject this as it seemed to me, on the face of it, not to be quite reasonable. The Senator has made a very interesting case for it here. I should like to think the matter over between now and the Report Stage.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Government amendment No. 50:
In page 6, lines 46 to 59, and in page 7, lines 1 to 9, to delete subsections (13) and (14).
Amendment agreed to.
Amendments Nos. 51 to 55, inclusive, not moved.
Government amendment No. 56:
In page 7 to insert ", and copies of the report shall, as soon as may be, be laid before both Houses of the Oireachtas" after "this Act" in line 16.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
Amendments Nos. 56 and 57 may be discussed together.
I think it desirable that there should be a statutory requirement that copies of the commission's annual reports should be laid before both Houses of the Oireachtas in the same was as the RTE Authority are required to have their annual report presented. This point was made by some Senators during the general debate. I accept it.
I should like to thank the Minister for, in part, meeting the points made during the Second Reading debate. I would suggest that he does not go all the way to meeting the point made in our amendment No. 57. It is good, of course, that the annual report of the commission should be laid before both Houses of the Oireachtas and, therefore, as a practical result become available to the press and become known to the public.
The difficulty is—a difficulty which we attempt to cover in amendment No. 57—that there could be complaints, perhaps quite important complaints, made to the commission, upheld by the commission and about which the public would not hear anything except, perhaps, in a garbled form, until perhaps a year or more has elapsed. We all know that these reports are not always dead on time. It could easily be 18 months or even longer after the hearing of the complaint before anything officially is known to the public.
I do not think there is any advantage at all to anybody in keeping these matters private. It is quite obvious, when we are dealing with a media which is so given to publicity of all kinds, that if a complaint is made, and particularly if a complaint is upheld by the commission, garbled versions of it will reach the public from various sources.
It would be better if an official version from the commission as to what they decided were made available, than that these garbled versions should be leaked in various directions during the year before the report finally comes out. I would suggest to the Minister that, besides his own amendment, which I agree is useful, he should consider either our amendment No. 57, or something like it, to ensure that these decisions of the commission become known rather more rapidly than would be possible in the annual report.
We say only that we ask for particulars of each instance in which the commission find in favour of the complainant. If they turn down a complaint there is no case at all for publicity. The less that is said about a complaint which is unjustified the better. If it is justified in everybody's interest, including even perhaps the interests of the people in RTE who were adversely affected, it would be a good thing to have this known because, were there to be a decision against RTE and, in particular against certain individuals in RTE, human nature being what it is, it is likely that some extremely lurid versions would be circulated. It would seem to be very desirable therefore that a cool, official statement from the commission should be circulated putting the case exactly as it has happened and not allowing possibly quite lurid reports to be circulated.
Again this is a matter on which we are quite close together. I agree with the intent of the Senator's amendment. I have some problems about practicality but again I can undertake to look at it between now and Report Stage and see how far I can go to meet the Senator.
One point which occurs to me off the cuff is that the Senator assumes that where the commission reject something, that should never be published. It might be wise to leave the commission some room. So far all the complaints which came before them were found to be unjustified but, in finding them they did lay down some interesting principles which would be part of a sort of code of practice in this matter. That might be interesting and important. Anyway I shall give further consideration to this in trying to meet the Senator.
I thank the Minister for giving us this undertaking. I had not intended to convey the impression that I felt that nothing should ever be said about complaints that were rejected. I had envisaged them as appearing in the annual report. I can see the Minister's point all right that it might be advisable to give statements whether the complaints were upheld or not, and I shall be looking forward to an amendment from the Minister on Report Stage.
Amendment agreed to.
Amendment No. 57 not moved.
Question proposed: "That section 4, as amended, stand part of the Bill."
This is a very long section, as long as quite a few Bills, and longer than many that come before us. I have a certain number of questions I should like to ask the Minister on different parts of the section. In order to avoid confusing the issue unnecessarily, perhaps I might start at the top of the section and work down, and if I ask one or two questions perhaps the Minister might answer them. Otherwise we will get bogged down in a mass of verbiage. I hope that will be acceptable to the Minister.
First of all, I would like to make a point that, as I understand it—and this covers the section as a whole; the concept of the section and the broadcasting complaints commission—this type of commission exists in certain other countries, for example, in Sweden. The opinion appears to be amongst those who work with television and radio that the tendency has been over the years that a body of what one might describe as case law has grown up. As these complaints come before these commissions, decisions are made, rule books and lists of questions go up in the files of the broadcasting concerns, and this will be an inhibiting influence. The attitude tends to be before a producer, say, or an editor starts putting out a programme, he has to go and look up the case law and see whether this type of activity has ever been covered by the commission. A suggestion has been made to me, therefore, that this is an inhibiting factor and has been shown to be an inhibiting factor in other countries. I should be glad if the Minister would give us his views on whether it could raise difficulties for RTE.
I have visited Sweden and have discussed this matter with members of the Swedish broadcasting authority. In their view —I will make a distinction in a moment—the existence of the complaints commission has been helpful to broadcasting in Sweden and has helped to inspire confidence in it. The members of the Authority did not tell me that they found it, or that broadcasters found it, an inhibiting factor, but I would not like to claim that I met all Swedish broadcasters or that there is no Swedish broadcaster who would not take this view.
We have to see it in proportion. As the existing committee have been in existence for a year and have considered three cases, in all of which, as it happens, they found in favour of the Authority, so far no new inhibiting factor has been set up at all in the course of a year. This only becomes inhibiting if you are faced with volumes of that length and you do not know where to find whatever it may be and you have a programme to put on in a hurry. If things were reaching that point, one would need to codify it in some way and make it shorter and snappier. I would think that, for quite a long time to come, there will be very little checking to be done in this area. At the moment there is none. No new inhibitions have been created by the existence of the complaints committee and I would not think that it is a serious threat for the future. It has not been found so by the authority in Sweden, nor has it been so found by the EEC, though I would not say there would never be a case of a broadcaster who would not complain about it.
Subsection (2) deals with the number of members of the commission. Some Senators suggested there should be five members instead of three, and that two should have professional experience of broadcasting. The Minister did not accept our amendments so I simply mention now that, while leaving the number of members of the commission at three I propose to put down an amendment on Report Stage to provide that one of these three should have professional experience of broadcasting which I think is highly desirable. I will be putting down an amendment to this effect. Subsection (3) provides that the Minister may out of moneys provided by the Oireachtas, and so on, pay for the costs of the commission. This, in itself, is satisfactory but later on in section 9 he takes back with the other hand what he has just given in section 4, and provides that before he pays over the licence money to RTE he is going to deduct what this has cost him in subsection (3) of section 4. That is a pity. I would have put down an amendment to delete this provision in section 9 but for the fact that it would not have been in order.
To my mind, since this is a public commission designed to keep an eye on RTE, in principle it would seem to be more sensible and better that the taxpayer pay for this and that RTE should not be expected to. It is like appointing a judge and making those who come before him pay for his salary directly whether they are found guilty or not.
On the following subsection (4) there is a very small point: it mentions that when appointing a member of the commission, the Government should fix his term of office which will not exceed five years. That is rather vague. I should like to ask the Minister has he any particular term in mind or is five years the term he does envisage.
As regards the cost of the operation being paid out of the licence fee, I think that is the fair method. After all, it is to the payer of the licence fee that the complaints commission renders a service by making available to them machinery for considering their complaints. Essentially it is the licence fee payer who will complain. He knows now that he will have somebody to complain to. I think it is not unreasonable that it should be he, rather than the taxpayer at large, who may, conceivably, not be interested in television at all, who pays for that. We should also have in mind that the sums involved are quite minimal; very little money is involved here; it will not involve any perceptible hoist in the licence fees. There are other pressures making for that and the complaints commission would be the very, very least of all these.
As regards the period of appointment, it is not unusual to provide a certain flexibility for the Government in relation to these matters as is provided under existing law in relation to the Authority and that is what is applied.
Has the Minister any particular figure in mind? What does the Minister propose to do with the first appointment?
I would like to leave myself some flexibility, if the Senate does not mind. There are factors involved. For example, the age of individuals might affect their period of appointment, and so on. I would not want to restrict myself, but I would not want it to be less than three years or more than five.
It looks as if the Minister might perhaps appoint different individuals for different periods. One gets that impression, but it is not an important point anyway.
With regard to the money, the mere fact, as the Minister says, and I am quite sure he is right, that it is a sort of flea-bite would suggest that it would be mean to take it back solemnly out of the licence money. When it is so very small one feels that the Minister for Finance perhaps could have disgorged it on this occasion.
The taxpayers might regard it as meaner to take it off them for a service they do not necessarily consume.
Anyhow, going over the page to the part labelled 18 (B), first of all, I would like to ask the Minister does he envisage himself making complaints to the commission? I suppose he can say: "How am I to know whether I will or not?" But I take it he must have something in mind, whether he would keep a fatherly — if that is the word — eye on programmes and reserve the right to make complaints to the commission, or does he propose to leave it wholly to members of the public or others who may be interested?
On that page the only other point I have to make is to point out to the Minister, and make him a present of the information, that in line 55 he will need to make an amendment because it refers to section 18 (1C) of this Act (inserted by the said section 3) whereas (1C) because of an amendment of his, agreed yesterday, became (1B).
I accept the need for change, as the Senator pointed out there. Will the Minister make complaints to the complaints commission? I certainly would not like to debar a Minister — myself included — from having that recourse. There might be circumstances in which if a Minister felt something was wrong, it might be better for him to toss the ball to the complaints commission at a given point rather than deciding something himself, or attempting to decide it himself.
For example it has not been unknown for Ministers to make complaints. A Minister made a complaint to the Broadcasting Authority regarding their coverage of a matter which concerned his own Department, which concerned a post office in the west. That complaint may or may not have been well founded; I do not know but there was, at that time, no arbiter. That, obviously, was a difficult situation when the complainant to the Authority was a man who had the power to remove the whole Authority. In some such case it might be desirable that the complaint would go—as other complaints do — to the Authority who would decide whether it was well founded or not well-founded and, if they found it ill-founded, the complaints commission should have a chance of ruling on it. I do not think that is very likely to occur but I would not want to rule it out or to say that a Minister should have less rights in this matter than another citizen.
On the question of money, could I ask the Minister how much was spent on the committee which have been sitting over the past year — just a rough idea — dealing with three complaints, which probably means that they would not have had to meet very often? What is the approximate figure?
This falls directly under RTE. I do not have the figures here. But the members of the committee do not receive any remuneration; all they get is out-of-pocket expenses and the sum involved would be very small indeed. I would think it would probably be less than £100. I will try to get the figure for the Senator.
I have a couple of points to make on the section which I think would be of interest to the Minister. The first is a very brief one in relation to money. We discussed this with the Minister on one of my amendments and he said that, while he was sympathetic to the idea that members of the complaints commission should not be paid, he did not want totally to debar himself from doing so. I propose to make a suggestion now, if only to leave it open to myself to put it in as an emendment on Report Stage, that when we talk about remuneration for members of the commission it should be tied to something. For example I would think it inconceivable that the remuneration for a member of the complaints commission could be fixed at a sum higher than that paid by way of stipend to any ordinary member of the RTE Authority. This is the kind of formula about which I am thinking which would not tie the Minister's hands too closely and, at the same time, ensure that the thing perhaps did not go out of all proportion completely.
The second thing I would like to talk about relates basically to subsection (2) of the section which lays down in lengthy and somewhat complicated detail a time scale for the procedure under which complaints may be dealt with. While I am sympathetic to the intention of the subsection, it is, in some sense, a Victorian way of trying to deal with problems which, of their nature, tend to arise with extraordinary rapidity and for which satisfaction is often also sought in a relatively short space of time.
We had an interesting debate and presumably we will have another one on simultaneity. The main characteristic of broadcasting is its immediacy. It seems to me that the main function of any complaints procedure should be to build in that immediacy into any complaints mechanism. What I am saying in regard to subsection (2) is that I think the time scale is a little too lengthy. I know there are good reasons for having it lengthy.
People should have maximum opportunity under the Bill and under the legislation to become aware of their rights and to exercise them. On the other hand, the more one extends the time available for complaining, the greater is the possibility of frivolous and vexatious complaints, the sort of complaints that would tie up the works of the commission and perhaps of the secretariat to an extent that was never even considered by the Minister or indeed by the Houses of the Oireachtas.
Perhaps a case can be made for looking again, between now and Report Stage, at the fairly lengthy time scale involved here. One wonders whether it could be reduced somewhat in order to bring it more into line with the immediacy of the medium itself while not materially infringing the rights of people to complain under the mechanism.
The third thing about which I should like to speak and which does not appear in the section at all, except almost by inference, is the question of remedies. If people feel aggrieved by something that has been said about them or done to them on radio or television they are likely to seek some kind of remedy. I should like to go on record as saying that I believe that there are probably circumstances in which people are entitled to remedies, remedies above and beyond those to which they might be entitled through the ordinary course of the law.
We are operating in a whole grey area, an area which is not very well charted in practices, standards or norms of any broadcasting institution of which I am aware. Perhaps the one major exception to this is in the United States of America where they have institutionalised and legislated for a right of reply system, which is rather cumbersome, but has had some notable effects in the not too distant past. If somebody writes in a complaint found to be justified, effectively all that happens is that a notification of the complaint and of the commission's findings on that complaint appear in the annual report of the commission. In the case of a minor complaint this may be satisfactory enough. In the case of a major complaint the person involved may feel distinctly aggrieved that all that has happened is that somebody has noted his complaint; somebody has said his complaint was a good one but that they do not propose to do anything about it for the very good reason that they cannot.
At this point, without committing myself to it, I wonder whether there would be a case for extending the section in this regard that in certain circumstances of some gravity if the commission felt some serious wrong had been done to a complainant, and if there was no other course of action available to that complainant, whether the commission should be able to instruct the authority to afford a right of reply to the complainant within a very short, specified period of time.
Very interesting legislation was passed on this in May of this year in France of which I have a copy here and which I can make available to the Minister if he so requires. Basically, this institutionalises and legislates for a right of reply, not even confined to individuals but extended to their descendants and or their spouses, in cases in which they believe their honour, reputation or interests have been adversely affected by any broadcast on the State television network. They have a procedure written down which is admirable for its simplicity and brevity. Basically, anybody who feels aggrieved to the extent to which he wants to have a right of reply on radio or television must make his complaint known to the administration of the ORTF within eight days. The administration must reply or take a decision on this complaint within eight days following receipt of the complaint. If the complainant receives no notification by the end of eight days after he lodged the complaint, he is to assume that his complaint has been rejected. He may then appeal to a council, which is set out in statutory form, for a further hearing of his case, again within a very short period of time. This council, which is composed, as far as I know very largely of independent persons and is directly responsible to the Prime Minister — it is taken as seriously as that — then decides whether the complaint is justified and if it is has the authority to demand the radio or television network concerned to afford the person concerned a right of reply in specified circumstances and modalities, again within a very short space of time. I suspect that the maximum length of time that can elapse between the making of a complaint in the first instance and the affording of the actual right of reply is not much more than a month. There is a certain Gallic, surgical quality about this which may not appeal to legislators on this side of the stretch of water that separates us from the rest of continental Europe. It is something to which I think the Minister might well give some attention and to which I propose to give some attention between now and Report Stage.
I was unavoidably absent when many of the provisions of this section were discussed during the late afternoon yesterday. Therefore, I did not get the opportunity of saying that I regard it as a very satisfactory section of the Bill, particularly as it removes all possibility of unseemly direct interference between the Minister and stations. It is elaborately and carefully framed in order to provide the machinery by which complaints can be decently and justly dealt with. It is for this reason that I find myself still dismayed that the amendment I offered on the one hand and on the other hand Senator Lenihan and Senator Mullen— amendments Nos. 28 and 29 suggesting that there should be four instead of two — are not acceptable. The reasons for amendments became more apparent to me as I thought between last evening and today.
On subsection (2) of the Bill — I am looking at page 3, lines 22-23:
The Commission shall consist of a Chairman and not less than two other members who shall be appointed by the Government.
On the next page subsection (11) says that a quorum for a meeting of the commission shall be two or such higher number as the commission may determine. But a quorum can be two. It seems to me that a provision of this kind, which is there to see that justice is done, so that justice will also be seen to be done, in many ways inhibits and disables itself by the provision that a meeting can take place with two people. Two people even of the greatest integrity who meet together in a room and hold a meeting cannot do it without having some sense that it is a conspiracy, not a meeting, that is taking place. Which of them is chairman; how do they call each other to order, or vote on something? A meeting of two people deciding on such a complaint seems to me to be one that may be good and proper but it does not look good and proper. It does not do justice to the spirit of this section. It seems to me that multiple problems flow from this. For instance, if one or two — and it is not impossible —of the commission should die, the question of continuity of experience, the passing on of a kind of deposit of faith, is being lost sight of, whereas a committee of five would have this continuity. Similarly, an epidemic of influenza or worse could remove two of that committee of three and the committee would be, to that extent, inoperative and disabled for a long time.
Even more embarrassing, under subsection (8), supposing it becomes necessary to remove somebody, then the two Houses of the Oireachtas must pass a resolution to that effect, which could take quite a long time. In the meantime, there is a commission of two remaining and passing judgment on complaints. That would seem to me to be an embarrassing predicament. Would not it be much better if there were four remaining while the other man was being judged? He cannot be replaced while he is being judged. It seems to me that for any of those reasons—continuity; credibility; the appearance and substance of justice and the question of actual justice— five people is by no means an unwieldy committee and is far more likely to produce a balanced report than three men in a room, let alone two.
I did not hear the Minister's reasons; I was not here and I apologise for my absence. But that is the reason that I am surprised that these strengthening amendments to an admirable section of the Bill were not entertained.
Like my colleague, Senator Martin, I was unavoidably detained yesterday on an interview board, one of the hazards of our work in the universities. I was especially concerned with section 4. While I agree that it represents quite an advance, I would have liked to ascertain whether the Minister had given any consideration to the possibility of having—either under this or the following section, where he speaks of advisory committees—a joint committee of the Oireachtas acting as an advisory committee. I had thought of it more under the complaints commission; that may be too narrow. Perhaps, the following section where we deal more with advisory committees might be a more suitable place for the insertion of such a committee. Perhaps I should raise it in greater detail on the next section.
I thank Senators for their useful contributions. Senator Horgan spoke of a possible amendment he would be bringing in, which I will consider very sympathetically. He spoke also of the rather dilatory procedures—as he called them—provided for the consideration of complaints. He made the valid point that, considering the nature of the medium with which we are concerned, speed of consideration may be quite an essential matter. He made a point also about remedy. When I listened to him at first on this point, I rather misunderstood him; I thought he meant remedies, such as payments of money to persons who were damaged and so on. I thought that this would be offering the commission in substitution for, or supplement to, the courts of law and that that would be undesirable in various ways. If what he has in mind, as it seems, is simply a right of reply situation, then that is something which I would consider carefully, together with whether anything can be done on the immediacy front between this and Report Stage.
Senator Horgan mentioned French procedure as a precedent which I was most interested to hear. He kindly offered to let me see these papers. I should be glad to do that. If he will let me have them, I will have a look at them and see to what extent, at this stage, we may be able to improve our Bill in these respects. I am not certain just what the practical or technical difficulties may be at this stage, but if I can make some move in that direction, certainly I should like to do so.
Senator Martin also made good points about the case for four instead of two ordinary members of the commission. I would prefer five to three, if I can get a good five. We have the existing commission which is of three. It works very well and I should not like to add to its personnel unless I am quite certain I have suitable people. The field of suitability in this area is fairly narrow. Of course, it is narrowed further by the fact that many people who would be highly suitable are fully engaged in something else. Therefore to some extent one falls back on a particular category of people which includes retired people, for example, or people who, for one reason or another, can spare the time and have the capacity. This is not a very large roster on which to draw and, when it is a question of non-remunerated, voluntary service, one must allow for that too. On the whole I should like to keep the wording I have—not less than two—bearing in mind that if I can get five I will. I accept the force of the Senator's contentions and I should like to move in that direction.
Senator Quinlan's concept that a joint committee of the Oireachtas might be brought into this matter is an interesting one and I know it is in line with a general pattern of ideas he holds, which are interesting. However, probably it would be resisted both by the Authority and by broadcasters as tending to bring politics into too close contact with the broadcasting process; granted the fact that much of our politics are adversary proceedings, this might tend to bedevil broadcasting rather than help it. For this reason I do not feel inclined to move in that direction. The best connection between broadcasting and Legislature is through, precisely, the legislative process, the whole of parliament deliberating on broadcasting; not inserting another level which we do not know how it would work. Such a joint committee might not in fact be attended by all the bad results that broadcasters and the Authority would certainly fear.
I do no see such a compensating advantage that would justify me in alarming the Authority and the broadcasters, as I think this would definitely do. We have to take into account the fears of people in these positions, even if these fears may be somewhat exaggerated. I am sorry to disappoint the Senator, but I do not feel I can accept this suggestion.
I am grateful for the Minister's interest in my proposals and will furnish him with the document concerned. One of the most democratic things we can do in an increasingly complex society is to provide remedies for people, not just avenues through which they can make ineffectual statements. I am sometimes reminded in this context of the story about the British journalist who was interviewing a person of the Republican persuasion in the early part of this century and asked what his policy was towards Britain. That person thought for a long time and then said very slowly: "Vingeance". This is not what is at issue here.
The kind of procedure I was suggesting I hope would be availed of only rarely, if ever, in a confrontation type situation. It is the kind of remedy I think would be availed of more often for the avoidance of doubt than for anything else. In other words, in so far as it is possible in programming terms, to give the benefit of the doubt to the complainant. The one thing which the authority has under its control, to a virtually limitless extent, is air time, whether on radio or television. In a sense, very often the fairest remedy that can be available to somebody is to give him a slice of that air time, proportionate to and perhaps even in the same sort of time segment, as the original programme in which he feels he was misrepresented and on which the commission feel he has made a good case.
I should like to stress that this is not because I have found any evidence in RTE in the past of any unwillingness to afford rights to reply to people. In fact about four or five years ago I was chairman of a programme of that very title called "Right of Reply" which ran for 26 weeks. This programme was not a howling success but it was a genuine attempt by the Authority, the programme-makers and the people inside broadcasting to widen the area of access to the media to people who felt aggrieved by what professional broadcasters were doing. My suggestion would not be in terms of confrontation with professional broadcasters but to provide a structure through which the concern, so many of them have expressed in the past for access to broadcasting, can be given effect.
I suspect that if this kind of procedure was written into the Bill, an informal relationship of procedures relating to rights of reply might be developed between the commission and the Authority, which would make it virtually unnecessary for the commission ever to exercise any deliberative powers it may be given.
I have two other small points on the section. Before I deal with these points there are some notable similarities between the French situation and the situation envisaged here although the time scale there is different. There is one crucial similarity, that is, that the council which finally decides on the individual's right to reply is not bound, in terms of time, to a number of days, but is bound only to report without delay. That is a marvellous administrative formula. On page 6 of the Bill there is a very similar formula where the commission is required to furnish a complainant with their findings as soon as may be after they decide on a complaint. It does not impose on them a duty to investigate complaints without delay, although naturally one assumes that something like this would happen.
One of the two minor points is in relation to subsection (2) which reads:
A complaint described in subsection (1) of this section may be made to the Commission by any person in writing but, if the complaint is a complaint other than one described in paragraph (g) of the said subsection (1), it shall only be considered by the commission if the following provisions are complied with, namely:
Then there is a list of provisions. Why is there an exception made for one type of complaint in subsection (2)? Apparently, there are to be two different procedures. One is a procedure for complaints other than those described in paragraph (g) of subsection (1), and that is the procedure which is actually written into the Bill. Then it is suggested that there should be another procedure for complaints made under paragraph (g) of subsection (1). It is not clear whether two separate procedures are involved; whether complaints under paragraph (g) of subsection (1) can be made without following any of these procedures and without any of the statutory limitations imposed on other complaints by this section. That is a genuine query which is very important.
The second point is again on the same provisions of the Bill, the various subparagraphs of subsection (2). There is reference to complaints which are made to the Authority in writing and received by the Authority and complaints which are received by the commission. There is not enough clarity here as to whether a complainant has to write one or two letters. If he writes to the Authority and the Authority decide that they cannot satisfy his complaint, do they forward his letter to the commission? If not, what happens? In paragraph (b) of the subsection there is reference simply to a complaint which is being received by the commission. It is not clear if it is an oral complaint or whether, like the complaint made to the Authority, it has also to be made in writing.
I thank the Minister for his sympathetic approach to my suggestion on a Joint Oireachtas Committee. The next best thing to having an amendment received is to have it sympathetically rejected. The Minister has done that and has also given some hope that the idea concerned may yet surface. I take it that, in part, the general activities of RTE will be within the limit of the proposed Joint Oireachtas Committee on semi-State bodies. I think the task of that body is much too omnibus and I would hope, in a very short time, to see it broken down. In the breaking down, the type of Oireachtas Committee I have been looking for under this section would probably emerge.
I also note in the section with great approval the Government amendment which says that copies of the commission report will be laid in the usual way before both Houses of the Oireachtas. If the Seanad in its judgment wishes, it can have a full-scale debate on that report at any time. That is a good safeguard but it means a debate in a full Committee of the House. By and large in situations like this we are really acting as a committee because only members who are directly interested and concerned are taking part. This is reasonable and right. We are really functioning as a committee, and not as a whole Seanad on such occasions.
Instead of having a general debate on reports that are laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas in the Seanad, under Standing Orders it would be open to the Seanad to refer the reports in question to a select committee of the Seanad. This would achieve the same purpose. We are trying to be helpful. We are not trying to tell RTE their business. I am convinced that Members of both Houses, in many spheres, represent the ideal medium for bringing the outside, non-civil service opinion to bear on a problem. All our national problems require to be looked at both from the official or the ministerial or civil service and the non-civil service viewpoint. The core of that non-civil service viewpoint is to be found in the ordinary back-bench Member of the Dáil and Seanad, suitably augmented whenever necessary by other outside additions.
I hope that we can progress in that direction and that the Minister will deal sympathetically with what I have been trying to achieve.
Firstly, I will deal with Senator Horgan's point. This matter, which is shrouded in rather technical verbiage, concerns "whether a time limit should be laid down for submission of complaints about published material". The reason why we have it in this way is that these are permanent documents as compared with broadcasts which are ephemeral and in respect of which RTE have to retain sound recordings. One of the main reasons for the time limit in the case of broadcasts is to avoid a situation in which RTE would have to retain sound recordings of broadcasts for prolonged periods. Of course if certain other suggestions of the Senator are taken up the time limit in the case of broadcasting would become even tighter. The main thing is that the published material is on the record and may surface at any time.
I would like to deal with the general points made by Senator Quinlan. Firstly, I am fully in agreement with him and with other Senators in my belief—and I think it is reflected in this Bill, and Senator Horgan has referred to it also—that broadcasting should become more the concern of the whole Parliament and less exclusively, the guarded concern of the Minister and the Government. To open it up is a major, if not the major, objective of the Bill. It is a fact that RTE will be subject to the scrutiny of the body recently set up on semi-State organisations. Of course it may not be reached for some considerable time as there is so much on that plate. As the Senator said, it is possible that this work may be in some way broken up.
It is also the fact, and it is very relevant, that reports coming forward under this Bill may be referred to select committees which, in that way, would be fulfilling the function. It may be helpful that broadcasters will have seen in our debate here that while there have been adversary passages, much of it has been a working towards a consensus, and an exchange of views leading to changes and so on. The fears that broadcasters might have entertained in this respect will tend to diminish. I will keep in touch with the Authority on the general question. I will see in what way we can progress.
I have still some queries which I should like to ask the Minister. Paragraph (f) deals with:
a complaint that an advertisement so specified contravened a code drawn up by the Authority governing standards and practice in broadcast advertising or prohibiting either certain methods of advertising in broadcasting or the broadcast in particular circumstances of advertising.
I am not sure to what extent, if at all, these codes governing broadcasts are published or made available or known to the public. It seems very desirable that the public at large should have some means of knowing what these codes are. One assumes that those engaged in advertising know them, but they are not likely to make complaints, except perhaps about trade rivals. The ordinary viewer or listener does not know. We have vague ideas, I may be wrong in this, that in drink advertising nobody under 30 is supposed to be portrayed. There are a wide variety of rules laid down about which we do not know. While we sit and look at these developments and mutter about them and perhaps make cups of tea while they are on, at the same time if the ordinary man in the street wants to make a complaint because he feels this code, which is there for his protection has been infringed, to what extent are they available to the general public?
The position is that the codes are available to all advertisers but copies are also available on application to RTE. Any person who wants a copy of the code and asks for it will get it.
I am delighted to hear this. I can think of one person who will immediately ask for one. I hope that our friends in the Press will make this known to the public at large. I would be very surprised if more than three or four people a year up to now have written into RTE asking for copies of these codes. They are matters which quite obviously should be fairly generally known.
Paragraph (g) is an extraordinary complex paragraph which, when interpreted with a good deal of sweat and blood, deals with this matter we had at some length on section 3 (1) (c) which deals with written, oral or visual material. I asked the Minister to delete the word "written", but unfortunately he declined. The effect of this paragraph coupled with the following subsection (2) is that there is a different procedure in the commission for dealing with complaints relating to written, oral or visual matter than that which exists for everything else.
On the Report Stage I propose, in paragraph (g), to put down an amendment to delete "written" and to confine this paragraph and the following subsection as a result to "audio or visual" matter and not "written".
The Minister put up various reasons —and one must accept that the House has accepted the Minister's reasoning on this—for not deleting from the Bill the various instructions to RTE set out in section 3 in so far as they relate to written material. The Minister felt that because RTE was a State concern, financed by the licence-holders and so on, that when they published anything, such as the RTE Guide, they should be subject to the injunctions in section 3. One must accept this now that a decision has been made.
Under section 4 there is a good case to be made, and the Minister ought to accept it when he comes to the Report Stage, that a broadcasting complaints commission ought not to deal with written matters. That commission is set up to deal with broadcasting both on television and radio and covering aural and visual material, which is basically exchange of programmes with other stations and so on. There does not seem to be much point asking them to act as censors, scrutinising written material. The fact that they are expected to do so makes a mess of subsection (2).
I am only paraphrasing and simplifying what is a very long subsection. Essentially, if one wants to complain about a programme one first has to write to the Authority within 30 days of the broadcast taking place or the most recent broadcast if there are several. If one does not get satisfaction from the Authority, one can complain to the commission. One cannot complain to the commission until 30 days after one complained to the Authority. All these things are laid out in some detail.
None of this, because of the specific provisions of the first part of subsection (2), applies to aural, visual or written material. How does one complain to the commission about material in the RTE Guide? It is unlikely to happen but it could happen and the Minister has provided for such an eventuality. In any event, it is bad legislation to leave holes like this. Because it is specifically stated that the provisions of subsection (2) do not apply to written, aural or visual material one wonders how one does complain. There is nothing that says you have to write to the Authority first. There is nothing now that says that you have to wait 30 days after complaining to the Authority before you can complain to the commission. It is left open. I cannot see that there is any legal way under this Bill of making a complaint about aural, written or visual material. I would be interested to hear the Minister's views on this subject.
I have another query in relation to subsection (3). This will have a material bearing on any amendments which are put in on Report Stage. This subsection reads:
... the Commission shall afford to the Authority an opportunity to comment on the complaint.
One would describe the Authority as the corporation sole. One cannot envisage the Authority trooping in front of the commission en masse to comment in unison, like the RTE singers, on any complaint which has been put before them. The only way in which the Authority could logically comment within the terms of this section would be to have a meeting about the complaint, to decide on an attitude about it and convey, through the secretary of the Authority, that attitude to the commission. This seems to fit in with subsection (8), which reads:
The consideration by the Commission of a complaint or request made to it under this Act shall be carried out by the commission in private.
I am wondering whether subsection (8), in conjunction with other subsections, might be so narrowly construed that it would exclude any hearing of persons by the Authority. I am all in favour of many of the other detailed subsections relating to the fact that the commission, for example, shall not have power to award to any party costs or expenses. It is very important that the whole procedure should be as simple and informal as possible.
I am concerned lest the Act would leave itself open to an interpretation which would have the commission meeting in private, and only considering written submissions. Perhaps the doubt might be met in respect of broadcasters if an eventual amendment was made to widen subsection (3) to include not only the Authority but employees with the Authority nominated by the Authority. Some formula like this might widen it satisfactorily and avoid the doubt which I think exists in the section at the moment, that the Authority might not, for example, have the power to hear witnesses in the course of their procedures.
A number of points have been made in connection with this rather technically worded section which I will take into account between this and the Report Stage.
Senator Yeats wondered whether there was any way of complaining about written, aural and so on, material. The fact is that the Bill leaves that open. As the Bill stands this will be a matter for the commission to settle, probably in consultation with RTE. Some of the written material in question would be directly related to broadcasts—for example, texts published by RTE in connection with educational programmes. I have dealt with the point of the time limit in complaints about published material, the point being that published material stays around longer of its nature and that is why that is required.
Senator Yeats—and I moderately deprecate the expression—referred to asking the complaints commission to act as censors in relation to published material. They will not be acting as censors in relation to published material or in relation to broadcasts. They have no powers of censorship at all. Essentially the censor operates before a matter is published or broadcast and has the power to prevent it. The complaints commission are not intended to have any such power. If something is broadcast or published which somebody feels should not have been, then the complaints commission function as an appeal board. That is their sole function. They are not censors and I am sure they would not wish to be.
The Minister is very worried about the word "censorship".
I am not worried.
He "moderately deprecates it". That is the expression. I immoderately deprecate the way in which he has constantly used the word "censorship" with regard to any suggestions that there might be changes, improvements or amendments made to BBC programmes before they are transmitted. The very concept of an Irishman choosing what is to go out on RTE 2 to the Minister is censorship. I immoderately deprecate his use of the word "censorship" in that respect.
However, on the question of censorship, under section 4, it seems to me that the activities of the Minister amount to censorship, and I think rightly so because it is agreed that a different situation arises as between on the one hand radio and television and on the other hand the written word.
Because of the extraordinary influence that radio and television have in people's lives, on the way they think and so on, some element of censorship or supervision is required beyond what one requires of the written word. This is the reason why the broadcasting complaints commission are a totally unsuitable body, in fact and principle, to deal with any kind of written material. It is essentially censorship but it may not be censorship in the sense that the circulation of the material is stopped, but nonetheless it is certainly an element of censorship in the sense that this commission can condemn the circulation of a particular article, say, in the RTE Guide or any other kind of printed material the Authority might circulate.
However, I was really startled to hear the Minister say quite casually in response to my query that with regard to audio-visual and written material that one knows all these matters would be settled casually and formally behind the scenes by the Authority with the complaints commission. We have this immensely long section, and on page 5 there is a very long subsection (2) which sets out in very great detail how you make a complaint, how it is to be dealt with, whom you make it to first, whom you make it to second, the time limits, who receives them and all the rest of it. It is all set out in the greatest detail.
If it is satisfactory in this instance of printed material, written material, audio material or visual material for the commission and the Authority to settle quietly behind the scenes informally how they are going to work these things, why on earth did the Minister bother with all this verbiage? Surely it is perfectly satisfactory in all cases.
He would have a case if he put up the proposition that all this is unnecessary, but he obviously feels, and his Department and the parliamentary draftsmen feel that this is necessary, that there are some reasons why we are told in such enormous detail the precise method of making a complaint and receiving one. Suddenly we find in relation to this section of the work of this commission that no part of it applies. Is it that the minds of the parliamentary draftsmen boggled at the thought of making provision for these written materials and so on? If so it seems to be another argument for deleting them altogether if they have to go to this much trouble, that it is not possible even to draft simple rules but having drafted all these detailed complicated rules, then quite casually to say "We do not need them in this case, we will just arrange it with the Authority", is not just good enough.
I have been reading subsection 18C with some alarm because it appears to me from my reading of it that in all cases in which the Authority accept decisions of the commission there is no legal obligation on the commission to publish particulars of decisions made by them in their annual report. The only legal obligation to publish decisions made by the commission is in situations which the Authority contest their decision on a complaint. I think the subsection, if my reading of it is correct, should be rewritten to make it absolutely clear that there is a statutory duty on the commission to publish, in whatever exiguous detail they decide, at least a factual statement of every single decision made on a complaint during the year, because if we do not do that we will allow the commission, good and all and conscientious though they may be, the right to decide whether they should inform the public of the full extent of their activities during the year.
As I said, I have taken note of the various suggestions that have been made at this stage of the discussion on section 4. I will have the section examined in the light of the various criticisms and if there are improvements that I can make in the section in the light of those suggestions they will be incorporated in the Bill and if they are not incorporated Senators will have a chance of having a go on Report Stage.
Business suspended at 12.35 p.m. and resumed at 2 p.m.
I am full of admiration for the professionalism and hard work which the Members of the House have devoted to this section but I find it difficult to take the section, as drafted, seriously. At an earlier stage I objected to the fact that the commission were so elaborate and top heavy, and unnecessarily so, and I put down an amendment to try to deal with that.
When one turns to the second part of the section dealing with the procedure by which complaints are made, I am even more appalled by the complexity of it. It seems to me like a bureaucrat's spree, the complicated way in which one must make a complaint. The mind boggles at the position in which the man in the street, if he wants to make a complaint and is foolish enough to look up the Act and puzzle out whether he has a complaint that is going to be entertained, is to go about making it, the conditions he must fulfil. He will certainly be deterred, to say the least, by reading this section. I am tempted to ask the Minister to add a section providing full legal aid to citizens who want to make complaints under this Act. One would need expert legal advice to understand fully this section as it is now drafted, as it is proposed to be in the Act.
From a practical point of view, I suppose the citizen who wants to make a complaint will not be foolish enough to look at the Bill: he will merely write in a letter saying that he objects to such and such a programme for the reasons which he sets out. That means then that the commission will have recourse to this section wondering whether they may entertain it, under what conditions they may entertain it and so on. It would be a good idea to include at least one lawyer on the commission to work out this section for the other members, to explain and advise them as to the legal implications of the section.
I do not think I am being unreasonable in suggesting that in this section the procedure for making complaints, or to look at it in another way, the procedure which the complaints commission must adopt and must comply with in order to look at a complaint, is extraordinarily complicated and extraordinarily difficult to understand. This means that we will have a rather elaborate commission which, it seems to me, will spend most of their time not really considering complaints and trying to do something about them but working out whether they are permitted by the Act to consider the complaint, whether it is the kind of complaint that is contemplated by the Act, whether they really should entertain it at all or merely say that unfortunately, although it seems to be a very well-founded complaint, they are precluded by such-and-such a subsection from looking at it in such-and-such circumstances.
From a professional point of view the section is very well drafted; it is a beautiful bit of work looking at it from the point of view of somebody who is letting his ingenuity run riot, but is it really necessary to have such a complicated procedure for somebody who wants to make a simple complaint that some programme offended against one of the things that, according to the Act, the Authority should not permit? I cannot believe that the procedure should be so complicated. I begin to wonder whether the reasons for such an elaborate commission are merely to be able to deal with complaints and to deal with the complexities of procedure, and it seems to me that this adds to the complexity of the whole procedure—the procedure for dealing with complaints, the commission that are to deal with them—and the situation will be that we will have a close-knit organisation or institution, spending all their time looking at their responsibilities, looking at the very complex section and wondering whether it is the kind of complaint that they should be looking at or that they may look at, or that they may look at in a certain situation.
As I say, I admire the section for its legal ingenuity, for the hard work that has gone into it, but from the point of view of dealing with a very simple matter, that is, a member of the public saying that a certain programme has offended against the Act itself, against what the Authority may or may not allow to be broadcast, it is extraordinarily complex. I cannot take the section seriously. I admire the Members of the Seanad who have done such hard work on it; I admire the manner in which the Minister has dealt with our suggestions and so on in a professional way, but the whole thing seems to me to be losing sight of the real problem that should be dealt with in this section.
I still have not solved the problem about how I go about complaining to the complaints commission about, for example, the RTE Guide. Under subsection (2) of this section, as I have already said, this is excluded from the complicated regulations set out. I do not know whether I should write first to the commission or first to the Authority or whether there is any time limit within which I have to make a complaint. There is no way set out in which one can make a complaint either about a written matter, an aural matter or a visual matter. There seems to be a complete lacuna in this Bill. Senator Ryan has said that this section has been set out with the utmost legal skill and so on but the trouble is that in this particular case legal skill seems to have broken down—there is a hole here. There is no provision made at all for telling anyone how he can deliver a complaint of this kind.
Senator E. Ryan has complained that the language of this section is too elaborate and so on. This complaint has been made on a number of occasions in the course of the debate. I would have wished that the language could have been simpler but as it came back from the parliamentary draftsman, it did assume, probably necessarily, a complex shape.
I think some of the fears expressed by Senator Ryan are somewhat exaggerated. He said complainants would need legal advice and so on. I think all the complainants need is a knowledge of the existence of the commission and that they can write to that commission. The citizens do not study the texts of all our enactments here nor do they understand them.
That is what I was hoping.
I agree this would tend to have a discouraging effect on anybody. Senator Ryan said the commission will have to pore over this document and that the commission should include at least one lawyer. On the second point I agree with him—it does need at least one lawyer. The chairman of the present committee who I hope would accept appointment also to the commission is a very distinguished retired judge— Judge Kingsmill Moore. I do not think he will find quite as much difficulty with the wording of the section as Senator Ryan would assume the commission would nor do I think the body concerned will spend most of their time on procedure. They will very quickly get a grasp of what has to be done.
The actual procedure is simple enough. In the case of a broadcast, which is the main function of the commission, written and visual material and so on, a complaint must be submitted to RTE within 30 days of the broadcast. If no reply or an unsatisfactory reply is received within 30 days the complaint may then be sent to the commission. That is the position as the Bill now stands. We will be studying it again in the light of important comments made by Senator Horgan about the desirability of speeding up the procedure.
That is really all the complainants need to know and it will be possible to issue to the press, after the Bill is passed, a statement which will set out in simple language but without force of law the procedures that are involved.
The Bill, in section 4 (18B) (2), provides that a complaint about written, visual or aural material published, distributed and so on by RTE, may be made to the commission in writing. It does not go further than this. The rest of subsection (2) contains the procedures, time limits and so on, applicable to submission of complaints about broadcasts.
Senator Yeats asked (a), why procedures were laid down in the case of broadcasts and not published material and (b), if procedures regarding published material can be settled by the commission in consultation with RTE, why not also in the case of a broadcast rather than the elaborate provisions contained in subsection (2). The primary function of the broadcasting complaints commission is to deal with unsatisfied complaints about broadcasts.
In the debate on amendment No. 34 by Senator Horgan, I explained in detail why I considered it desirable to have statutory procedures for dealing with publications laid down at the outset. Publication and distribution of written, aural and visual material is largely a peripheral activity of RTE. It could well have been decided— some Senators suggested this—not to give the broadcasting complaints commission any function in relation to them. Sometimes these discussions followed a simpler course. However, I considered, and the RTE Authority agreed, that it was desirable that this activity should be subject to the same statutory restraint as in the case of broadcasts and that similarly complaints of alleged breaches of these statutory restraints should be considered by the complaints commission. However, because these complications actually come from a desire to avoid even further prospect of complications because of the peripheral nature of these activities, it was considered unnecessary to further complicate an already complicated section of the Bill by laying down in it statutory procedures for a treatment of these complaints by the commission.
As I explained earlier in the debate, the need for time limits does not arise in the case of publication. They have a permanent nature and are quite distinct from broadcasts which are ephemeral. It might be that different kinds of procedures might be needed for different kinds of publications. These are the reasons why the Section has assumed the possibly frightening shape that it has, but the conception covered by it can be explained simply, as I hope I have done, but without force of law. I presume the draftsman's activities are always intended to stop possible loopholes and in stopping the loopholes everything becomes more complicated than normal speech. I regret what has appeared to Senators as excessive complication.
It looks, therefore, as if I was right when I suggested before lunch that the reason why these matters were not dealt with in any way in this section was that the draftsman simply funked the prospect of having to deal with it. The thing was complicated enough and the draftsman probably felt that he could not bear any further complication.
One might wish he funked more things.
The problem, nevertheless, is that while he has closed several loopholes in this section there is this fairly big loophole left. I suggest that something ought to be done about it. One might well feel that the sensible thing would be to say in subsection (2) that the procedure in dealing with complaints shall be laid down by the commission. There would be no loopholes then and it would be left to the commission and no problems would arise at all. If they wanted to make the rule that you had to write first to the Authority and then wait 30 days, they could do so. I really do not see what legal problems could arise.
I might consider putting down an amendment on Report Stage to this effect. Failing that I will certainly put one down to add a further subsection after subsection (2) which will say with regard to limited types of complaints that the complaints commission may lay down their own procedure for dealing with them. At the moment there is no way of dealing with this that I can see. If I write in complaining about the RTE Guide or about some programme that has been exchanged with some other broadcasting concern there is no way in which either I can make the complaint or the commission can deal with the matter. I will, therefore, on Report Stage try to devise something which will not be complicated but which would at least fill in what does seem to be a loophole.
Subsection (7) states that when the commission have sent to the Authority a statement of the decision they will ask the Authority what they think about it and within 14 days the Authority must inform the commission in writing whether the commission's decision has been accepted by the Authority. My reading of this subsection is that they can say "We accept it" or alternatively they can say "We have complete confidence in our staff, our editors", and so on. "We believe that in all the circumstances they were right in what they did. We cannot accept that they invaded privacy or showed bias", and so on.
In the event of the Authority refusing to accept an adverse decision of the commission, nothing at all happens. A year or so later the Authority will incorporate this information in their annual report and that is the end of proceedings. I suppose in theory the Minister could ask each House of the Oireachtas to dismiss the Authority but I hardly assume that any Minister would wish to do so in these circumstances.
There may be some moral effects a year later in the publication of this decision of the complaints commission. It does not make much difference if the Authority agree or not. The matter is heard, in due course published but if under subsection (7) the Authority refuse to accept the decision that is the end of that.
The Senator is quite right on the mechanical substance of the thing. The commission would have no executive powers. The Bill does not seek to ensure that they would. Nor would RTE be bound to accept their decision on any complaint. However, the commission would have to make an annual report to the Minister on their activities and these reports would be studied very carefully by the Minister, the Government and RTE. Their power and influence would lie there and this power or influence, although indirect, would be quiet significant. Similar procedures are in use in other countries and they have been found to be influential. I do not see a body like the RTE Authority treating lightly a finding of the commission. That is what we have to rely on there.
I think the Minister will appreciate that for obvious reasons of loyalty to their staff the Authority on any occasion would be very unwilling to accept a decision which went against a member of the staff. These things are not cases of black or white. These are marginal matters as to whether somebody overstepped the bounds of impartiality or whatever. It is one of these matters that could be argued over. The commission may take one view and the Authority who would naturally want to support the staff and officials in television or radio, would be inclined, unless the case was so grave or so obviously damaging in its nature that they could not avoid doing so, to support their staff rather than the decisions of the commission.
I am not suggesting that there is really much that can be done to change this subsection. It is an inevitable consequence of having a commission. One can see that there is nothing much the Minister can do about it. But it strengthens the case for urging the Minister to think very seriously—as he has promised to do— about the possibility of putting down an amendment on Report Stage so that there would be more immediate and rapid publication of decisions of the commission. If there is to be the kind of moral compulsion on the Authority in matters of this kind that the Minister speaks about and that we should all like to see, it is desirable that the public should hear as soon as possible about these matters.
Let me proceed to the next subsection on page 6, subsection (8). I have a very small query here. It states that consideration by the commission of a complaint or request made to them under this Act shall be carried out by the commission in private. I quite agree that they would have to carry it out in private but I should like to know what a "request" is. We have, at enormous length in this section, details about how complaints are made. I am not at all clear as to what is precisely meant by "request" in this case.
Then subsection (9) says that the commission shall not have any power to award to any party costs or expenses. I should be interested to know why not, because it seems that they should have the possibility of doing so in certain cases.
I am now putting the question that section 4, as amended, stand part of the Bill. No Senators offering, the question will be put.
I should like to know what the word "request" means in this subsection and also why should the commission not have the power to award any party costs or expenses.
In relation to the Senator's first point that the Authority would be likely to support a staff member, right or wrong as it were, in regard to a programme already broadcast, that tendency might exist. I would not assume that it necessarily did exist. The Authority would certainly have a tendency to look as favourably as they legitimately could on the activities of their staff but if a member of the staff had been seriously in the wrong the Authority would agree that he or she was. However, whether such a partiality would be there, it seems most unlikely that the Authority would not take steps to avoid a similar cause for complaint in regard to future broadcasts. This is one of the major functions of the commission, its major utility.
As regards "requests", the idea there is that the complaint is thought of as emanating from a member of the public. The request might be from RTE or from a member of the staff of RTE to be heard by the commission. That is how I interpret it, anyway.
I am a little puzzled by that. I think I will put an amendment on Report Stage to delete the words "or request" unless I get a more definitive announcement as to why it should be there. I am not at all satisfied. Indeed, I am appalled at the thought that we might have a whole new range of things under this section which were not complaints but some kind of informal requests. I will deal with it by putting down an amendment to get rid of it or to see if it is really necessary. I should like to repeat my point under subsection (9)— I assure the Minister that it is the last point I propose to make under this section 4—as to why the commission should not have power to award any party costs or expenses. I can quite see that they would not want to do it very often but I cannot see why they should not be given the option in certain cases to decide to award them.
We did not want to seek to establish either a supplement or a substitute to the ordinary courts of the land. Therefore, we envisaged the commission in this shape without executive power, the power to enforce their decisions. It follows from that that they should not have this power of awarding costs or expenses. It is not that kind of commission we have involved here, despite the formality of the legal language in which it has to be encouched, but rather an informal body. We would not expect that anybody coming before them would normally incur costs except the stamp on the letter written in. Of course, he might have to come to Dublin but presumably he would consider that worthwhile. That is the reason why we did not want the commission to have power to award costs.
Question put and agreed to.
SECTION 5.
Question proposed: "That section 5 stand part of the Bill."
Section 5 is one which we certainly welcome. As I understand it, it re-enacts part of the Principal Act with regard to these advisers, in effect, taking out the Government and leaving it to the authority to appoint these committees and call meetings of them and so on. The only question I would have is in relation to paragraph (b) of subsection (3) which states:
An adviser under this section shall advise the Authority whenever requested by the Authority.
I cannot see the point of telling an adviser that he must advise if called upon—that is always an obvious aspect of his being a member of an advisory committee—and it raises the prospect of what hapens if he refuses. He will be committing some sort of offence under the Bill. I know this is taken over holus bolus from the Principal Act. All I can say is that I was not a Member of this House when it went through so I could not ask the question then. I am asking it now. Is there any point in having a paragraph (b) such as this? It would seem perfectly obvious that if a person is a member of an advisory committee he is there to give advice and to come when called and so on. To tell him solemnly with the full panoply of the two Houses of the Oireachtas that when asked for advice he must give it seems rather silly.
I will look again at the section but it was felt to be desirable for the sake of completeness that the adviser should be advised to advise. If we find that it is redundant I am quite happy to take it out. Obviously I am not dying in the last ditch for that one.
Question put and agreed to.
NEW SECTION.
It is suggested that amendments Nos. 58 and 59 should be discussed together.
I move amendment No. 58:
Before section 6 to insert a new section as follows:
"6.—The Minister may, after consultation with the Authority, authorise the Authority to rebroadcast programmes broadcast from any source other than the Authority."
This amendment is an alternative to section 6. I would not like the fact that I put this amendment down to convey the impression that I would be happy with the section as amended in this way. If the Minister is not willing to delete section 6, it seems to me that he ought to accept this amendment and, while achieving the result he wishes to achieve, he should leave it in the form as set out in this amendment.
I will not go into the general principle of section 6. There is a separate principle involved in this amendment. Section 6 does not give the authority any power which they do not already have. They already have power under section 16 of the Principal Act to broadcast any programmes they wish. Subsection (2) (c) of this section of the 1960 Broadcasting Authority Act provides that the Authority shall have power to originate programmes and procure programmes from any source and to arrange with other broadcasting authorities for the receipt, exchange and relay of programmes. In other words as things stand the Authority have ample authority to broadcast the BBC or anybody else either simultaneously or not. The purpose therefore of section 6 is not to give them power that they do not already have. It is to force them to use power they do not want to use. The Authority could do it if they wanted to. The only purpose therefore of the insertion of section 6 in this Bill is so that the Minister can give a direction, over the head of the RTE Authority, in a dictatorial manner, instructing them, directing them that they must broadcast the BBC or UTV or whatever it happens to be. The Minister has a later amendment which, if anything, expands on the existing wording of section 6, and substitutes "in its entirety a service of programmes specified in the direction...".
My amendment therefore seeks to restore to the RTE Authority the power to decide these matters for themselves. It makes the addition to the powers they already have in the 1960 Act of saying that they must be authorised by the Minister. This raises the basic principle, in other words, that the Minister seeks to usurp the power and the authority of the RTE Authority and to take it on himself as a sort of one man dictator to do this.
If the Minister has not sufficient confidence in the RTE Authority to feel that they will make the right decision on a fundamental matter of this kind—after all it relates to the new channel, it relates to more than half of the total programme output of the RTE Authority—then he obviously has the duty, either under existing provisions or under the provisions as they will be in the Bill, to sack all of them or some of them, and appoint people in whom he has confidence. If he has confidence in them he should leave them to run their own affairs in the way they see fit, instead of providing this quite extraordinary power of a kind which, I suspect, has never been seen in legislation in this country or in any other country, giving one individual the power to make these extraordinarily dictatorial demands upon a broadcasting authority.
He is not only flying in the face of the RTE Authority, but he is also flying in the face of the Broadcasting Review Body which recommended that this should not be done. All the experts on this matter say that the second RTE channel should be left to Irishmen to run. The Minister is giving himself the power in the Bill, as a one man dictator, to direct the Authority whether, they want to or not, to use their second channel for broadcasting the BBC.
Section 6 is fundamental to the whole Bill. This amendment put down by Senator Yeats is very subtle but if accepted it would completely delete section 6 and the power which it confers—not so much the power but the wish behind it. The section reads:
The Minister may, after consultation with the Authority, direct the Authority to rebroadcast programmes broadcast from any source other than the Authority and specified in the direction.
If the Minister is committed to providing a genuine alternative choice simltaneously transmitted to the single-channel areas—and I have no doubt that the Minister has that commitment —this section should be allowed to stand as a substantive part of the broadcasting Bill. This will ensure the legitimate right of all licence holders and, in turn, taxpayers in the single-channel areas to have at least an alternative to a single transmission. I come from a single-channel area and that is my commitment to this section. This will give us an alternative and bring us into line with the multi-channel areas.
I know there is a widespread demand for this choice. There is widespread support from the single-channel areas and anyone who asks for any substantial alteration of section 6 is ignoring this widespread demand from viewers. We must not forget that the viewers are the most important consideration in this whole context of rebroadcasting. I respectfully suggest that section 6 should remain as it is and I would ask the Minister to deal with it accordingly.
Before Senator Dolan intervenes I should like to say that the Chair is somewhat anxious that there should be a full-scale discussion on this amendment which might be in anticipation of the discussion on section 6. It would be hoped therefore that Senators would limit themselves in discussing this amendment to the differences between the wording of the amendment and the wording of the section and not allow the debate to become so wide that it would, in fact, be a discussion of the principle of section 6.
I should prefer to see this section deleted completely. If it is not possible to do that I should like to see the amendment accepted. So far as I can see, it has already been decided to provide a second channel. It seems that the Government have made preparations in advance. Sites and various technical matters have already been prepared. Irrespective of what we do here this will happen. All we can do is to try and voice our protests to the best of our ability. It seems that it is the intention of the Government to ensure that a second channel will be provided. That second channel will not be under the control of RTE and BBC will be broadcasting it in its entirety from that station. Certainly I object to that.
There is no undue demand for this. People living in the multi-channel areas can receive these programmes because of their geographical situation. If individuals in other areas have piped facilities to provide themselves with multi-channel viewing that is their business. To expect the taxpayer to pay taxes to provide British propaganda is completely wrong. This is a wrong attitude for any Minister of any Government to adopt. Most countries guard very jealously the complete governmental control of their broadcasting system. It may seem like a type of censorship but every country seems to adopt a principle such as that. To open the flood gates all over the country for British propaganda would be very wrong. That is what BBC is, let us make no mistake about. The British spend millions of pounds each year on periodicals and on television and radio to ensure that their way of life will be put across.
It will eventually follow, as a result of section 6 being adopted, that one day RTE will fade out of existence and the British Government and the BBC will take over. We will have no control over what is broadcast. That is wrong. The Germans and other nations fighting wars were very conscious of propaganda. The Germans had Dr. Goebbels installed to ensure that he would put their way of life across. I suggest that we have another Dr. Goebbels here in our Minister who is using his important position to ensure that by the time he has left office he will have cemented, if at all possible, the Act of Union again. He should not fall for the whims of the LFM and a few organisations who are clamouring for this. It is all very well for people from other parts of Ireland to say that we, in the north, enjoy the multi-channel areas. Let me point out to them that in other areas many of them enjoy the benefits of the National University which we have not got. They enjoy the benefits of railway transport, of airports, of industrial estates and of——
I am afraid the Senator is sailing very wide of amendment No. 58.
I respect the Chair. I was just adverting to the fact that some Senator said that we in the multi-channel areas more or less had something that we were denying them. I was merely trying to point out to Senators that in their areas they had many things we were unable to avail of.
The Chair has already expressed its concern that what the amendment is concerned with here is the difference between the Minister authorising the Authority and the Minister directing the Authority. There is a clear difference there because in one case it is a question of the decision of the Minister and in the other case it is a question of the decision of the Authority. The difference between these two situations is perfectly relevant on this amendment. The Chair finds great difficulty in seeing that a complete discussion on the principle of section 6 is appropriate now, considering that such a discussion will take place later. Therefore the Chair would prefer if Senators would only refer to the principle of section 6 in summary form in order to justify their support or non-support for amendment No. 58.
I will endeavour to comply with your wishes, a Cathaoirleach, in this matter. However, I consider that section 6 is a tremendously important part of this Bill.
There will be an opportunity to discuss it.
I want to agree with you and with others in drawing a distinction between "direct" and "authorise". That is the key to it. I am not talking about the Minister in his personal capacity but because of his pronouncements and because of various facets of Government policy people are inclined to believe that he will be wielding undue power over the destiny of this nation by taking on himself the authority to direct RTE as to what they should broadcast. It is wrong to give him such authority. He is not competent to hold such authority as an individual. I do not mean this in a personal way. It would apply to any Minister. In view of the record of our present Minister, I think it is wrong. I would wholeheartedly support the amendment to have the word "authorise" included instead of "direct".
It is widely known that the Minister, for good or for evil, has set himself up as the champion, as the West Briton, who at all times seems to favour the British way. If people are suspicious of him we cannot blame them. I am not sure whether I can refer to the cost or not. It is supposed to cost around——
It would be more relevant to the section but a passing reference would not be out of order.
I think it will cost around £5 million. We know the Government are in a straitjacket as far as financial matters are concerned. We have had the experience of increases in the price of stamps and other slick ways of introducing mini-budgets to provide the necessary finances. If this money is so freely available, I suggest it could be used in much better ways than to subsidise British propaganda efforts. The section will eventually have an effect on the livelihood of many of our people who are engaged in RTE. They have done a fairly good job with limited resources down through the years. I would hate to see the day when they would fade out of existence and we would have in their place the BBC, which I believe will happen if this is accepted. The money involved could be used in many other ways for the benefit of this country especially under the present financial difficulties, rather than steamrolling this through the Dáil and Seanad at a time when the Minister and the Government should be directing their attention to the 103,000 people who are unemployed. They should be trying to solve that problem instead of trying to foist this on us.
There are many ways in which RTE could be used for our advancement as a nation and to retain our individuality. If this section is accepted all the efforts of people who have been striving to maintain our culture and traditions over the past 700 years will be wiped out in a few years. The next thing that will happen is that the Americans will come over to Ireland and take over the other RTE channel.
I would like to hear the Minister who is widely travelled, making some reference to the position in small countries such as Belgium, Holland and Denmark. Do they invite in the Germans and the French to run their radio stations? Do they throw open the floodgates to them and allow them to foist all their political propaganda opinions on their network? I do not think they do. If the Minister has ideas on that, I should like to hear them when he is replying. We are doing a bad day's work here today. This Bill is designed to completely convert the remaining Irish to the British way of life. It is wrong of the Minister to introduce it here, to push it through—this section especially—so that he will be able to direct the Authority as a complete dictator in regard to this very vital weapon so far as our survival is concerned.
All modern nations feel that the media are vital to their survival. We as a nation who have not yet attained our full freedom should guard jealously what we have got in RTE. We have a good staff so far as I know. They have designed and put across programmes racy of the soil. We would not be against a second channel provided it was directly under their own control and that they could pick from any foreign programmes they liked educational and other types of programme that would be useful. It would be detrimental to our best interests to allow any Minister, and in particular the present Minister, to direct the Authority to do what he says.
We should be grateful to the Chair for drawing our attention to the purpose of the amendment and thereby endeavouring to keep us reasonably within the terms of the amendment. We should be sensible about this. I live in one of the disadvantaged areas. The purpose of the amendment is to continue the present state of affairs as it affects approximately half the country. There is no suggestion in regard to radio or newspapers that we should occupy a similarly disadvantaged position. I should like to make it clear that I am giving a personal view. If it were possible I should like to see a second Irish station, not necessarily an RTE station, and a third one that would give at least competition to RTE. I should like to think that it would be possible to have a consortium or consortia of interests that would provide alternative programmes to RTE. I should like to think that it would be possible to control all the visual broadcasts that come into this country. But, being quite pragmatic and sensible about it, you just cannot do that. In any event, in the space of some years, as the Minister has already pointed out, foreign broadcasts, possibly from as far away as the USA, will be available to every corner of this country. In fact, we are talking about an interim period. The Minister is more competent than I am to deal with the charges made against him by Senator Dolan. No doubt he will reply in due course.
It seems to me that unless somebody can come up with a suggestion as to how we might provide, within our shores, an alternative and competing programme or programmes, there does not seem to me to be any other way out of giving the people in the disadvantaged areas at least one choice of an alternative programme. I should like to think that we could have sufficient control over all our broadcasting, both visual and aural, to give to our people only what we thought was most desirable and to shut out from the outside world everything else that might possibly interfere with our culture and way of life; but I really think that is living in cloud cuckooland. Most Irish people buy English papers. I buy two on a Sunday of each. It has not changed my outlook on things Irish. If anything it has broadened my interest in things international and particularly in the context of the European Economic Community.
We cannot have our cake and eat it. I have tried to do it for most of the years of my life. I must admit that in the end I found it was quite impossible to do it. If the Opposition cannot come up with some alternative suggestion that would give our people in the disadvantaged areas at least a reasonable choice of programmes, some proposals such as the Minister's will have to be accepted in the interests of realism and in the interests of the people who are living in areas where we do not at present enjoy an alternative programme. I do not want this to be taken as criticising RTE. I said on the Second Stage that by and large over the years RTE and their predecessors—I can remember back to 2RN—have done a first-class job. When I come to the east coast I see BBC 1 and BBC 2 and, in my humble opinion RTE are doing a better job and will continue to do a better job. The station will be even better with competition.
Senator Russell is missing the point of this amendment. It is not really at issue whether we should have a situation where BBC Northern Ireland, or whatever, is rebroadcast. What is particularly objectionable in this section is the fact that the Minister wants to have the sole right to decide what programme will be rebroadcast, and whether or not it will be an outside programme. That is the real objection to it. It is conceivable that if this were left to the Authority, if this amendment was accepted, in due course in consultation with the Authority and the public generally, it might eventually be decided that something of that kind would be worth trying. What is objectionable is that the Minister has anticipated that the Authority will not agree with him. He has taken the power to tell the Authority to go to hell, that they are to rebroadcast it anyhow, whether they like it or not, whether they think it is right or not, whether anybody else thinks it is right or not. That is what is particularly objectionable about this section. That is what this amendment is designed to improve.
If this amendment is accepted what Senator Russell thinks would be a good idea may still be done, but it would be done in a far more democratic way and reasonable way than the way envisaged in section 6. We must go back to 1960. There was agitation for some years to give the broadcasting service some independence, to take it out from under the bureaucratic hand of the Department, of the authoritarian hand of the Minister. When the Authority were established under the Act, this was very widely welcomed, in particular by liberal opinion. Now at last they would be independent of the Government, independent of the Minister. They would have this independence and this was widely welcomed. That welcome was justified because, over the years, the Authority have taken advantage of the independence and power given to them, have acted on that and built up a reputation for and image of acting in a reasonable and independent way. Now we are taking what is quite positively and quite dramatically a complete step back. This independence which was given to the Authority is to be taken away from them in the most brutal way. Half the programmes which RTE are to broadcast will be what the Authority think reasonable and proper and the other half will be what the Minister says: "You broadcast that and that is that."
This is a complete step-back from the position that was reached in 1960 after many years of discussion and agitation to set up an Authority and give some independence in broadcasting. It is a complete step backwards. It is an extraordinary thing that we should have this situation 15 years after the original Act. There is no power whatsoever to the Authority. Their views, their experience, their expertise, everything else is to be completely ignored if the Minister does not like it. There is no power, as we have seen, under section 4; there is no power to the complaints commission to make any comment or exercise any power in regard to the suitability or anything else of the second programme which will be broadcast. There is no power— and I think it is rather pointed—to the Oireachtas to express any opinion about the order which will be made by the Minister. It is rather significant that in many of the sections in this Bill the Minister makes orders and provides that, where an order is made, it is placed before both Houses of the Oireachtas who may object. This would seem to be——
I would prefer if the Senator did not dwell at length on that because that is the subject of amendment No. 61.
I shall pass from that. In any event, I am making the point that the Authority has no power, the complaints commission has no power and the Oireachtas has no power to interfere with this direction by the Minister. It seems to me quite extraordinary that a Minister should appoint an Authority, which he has full power, together with the Government, in selecting, for their experience, impartiality, intelligence and capabilities in various ways that having appointed them, nevertheless he has no confidence in them and takes the power to tell them that no matter what their recommendation may be he is ignoring it and going his own way.
The Minister commented in the course of this Bill on the power given to the Minister under section 31 of the Act and said that in that case the Minister had power to direct that certain things should not be broadcast and that certain other things should be broadcast. But here the Minister does not merely take the power to say that a particular programme should be broadcast, but takes the power to put on an entire programme over which nobody has any control. This is certainly far more autocratic, infinitely more autocratic, than any power the Minister had under section 31. I find it difficult to understand how the Minister could have the nerve to make any comment about the powers given to the Minister under section 31 when he, on the other hand, takes the power to put on an entire programme over which nobody has any power whatsoever to object or to comment upon.
I think this amendment should be accepted. It does not, in any way, interfere with the views expressed by Senator Russell or anybody else who may feel that there is something to be said for taking a second programme from BBC or UTV. This may still be done but it would be done in a mature and responsible way; done after consultation where everybody's views and in particular, of course, the Authority felt it was worth trying. But it should not be done merely at the whim of a Minister who wishes to impose his will upon the Authority and everybody else. It is quite clear that he is anticipating the Authority objecting to this. Why does he anticipate the Authority objecting to this? If the Authority is going to object why, nevertheless, does he feel he should ignore the view of the Authority and put on a particular rebroadcast in spite of their view, in spite of the opinion of the Authority which should be the body which has the experience, expertise and the knowledge of what is the proper kind of programme to put on here?
I feel that the people who put down the amendment do not give full value to the word "consultation", as set out in section 6 by the Minister. "Consultation" to me does not mean prior information, to give somebody prior information and then direct them to do something. It means an in-depth exchange of views, after which the person to whom the Authority are responsible would have to widen the situation and make a decision on his proposal.
Take it beyond the question of the Broadcasting Authority. I should love to be able to write out an agreement, on prior consultation, put it to an employer and say to him: we want prior consultation but, before you insert anything, if you have a set of proposals, it must be prior consultation and agreement with us. That to me does not seem to be practical. The amendment—in the way in which it is worded—seeks for consultation in depth and a full exchange of views. In effect it is saying it should be through advance consultation and agreement by the Authority that the programme should be broadcast. I feel it is not practical; one does not get that type of written agreement particularly when one is responsible to a higher authority. I would love to be able to read out an agreement and say: I want prior consultation and I will not do anything; it must be written down that it is prior consultation and an agreement by me.
I have already objected to section 6 because I believe that no Minister should have the absolute authority to direct the Broadcasting Authority to rebroadcast any programme he decides should be broadcast. As the last speaker has said, he can have consultation. But, as Senator E. Ryan said, he was presupposing that they may not agree with his decision. That is the only reason he has written into the Bill that he has authority to direct them. I cannot for the life of me see why we have an Authority at all if the Minister thinks he is more omniscient, and indeed as he wants to be more omnipotent than is the Broadcasting Authority. It spells complete dictatorship to me.
There seems to be no reason for the existence of an authority if the Minister will override their decisions. We have already had experience of our Broadcasting Authority. We are all completely satisfied with their handling of broadcasting to date. We should continue to have the utmost confidence in them and allow them make the selection. We know what the Minister has in mind, that he wants to Broadcast BBC 1. We all object to that as would anybody who wanted to provide the best of all programmes for our people. Perhaps that is the reason he writes into this Bill that he has the authority to direct them to broadcast any programme he chooses.
Obviously, the debate on this section will take a very long time. Practically every amendment involves the very substance of the Minister's proposals in this matter. I want to mention a few points which seem to me to be very close to the keynote of the entire enterprise without barring from myself the right to return on some of these points and indeed on other points which I do not intend to voice at this stage.
It seems to me that a false dichotomy is being introduced from the very beginning. The suggestion on the Minister's side is that those of us who do not approve of open broadcasting, in the sense of introducing, say, BBC 1—it may not be BBC 1— as an alternative to RTE for the entire country, that those of us who oppose that point of view are opposed to a second channel for people outside the area in which British television in all its channels is available. That is false dichotomy. I am not saying that anybody dishonestly or blatantly made this clear but part of the rhetoric of the Minister's case has been that people in the west want BBC 1. He has arrived at this decision by means rather similar to Mr. de Valera's means, that is that he has looked into his own heart and has discovered that. He may have spoken to people here, there and everywhere on the matter. We all have done that. But there is no proven case that the people outside the multi-channel area want BBC 1. It is not proven and there is no point in saying that it is. No systematic survey has been made in that area. He is working on a hunch and his hunches about what people in the west want may be precise and accurate but they have no status above the hunches which those of us on this side of the House have with regard to the same matter.
Speaking for my own part, I am not speaking for those on this side of the House at all; I am not a member of any party. All of those who have argued against BBC 1 as an alternative to RTE have suggested that it is not a choice between BBC 1 and nothing; it is a choice between BBC 1 and a second RTE channel. That second RTE channel could take many forms. It would seem to me that the ideal form would be to take the very best that is available from the British stations, recompose them in a continuous programme, and interleave them with local, home-made programmes from RTE, some of them repeats, some of them original programmes. It would be a highly creative activity to undertake. It would give us the best of every world.
I have here the Radio Times of last week. I shall not laboriously go through it. But, looking through it, it is incredible how irrelevant a great deal of the content of these programmes is to our needs as viewers. They are totally directed towards people who have been brought up in a certain cultural milieu, given a certain kind of education and who are geared towards values which are in many ways radically different from ours. Indeed it would seem to me that a diet of that over a few years would inevitably pull the attention and the consciousness of our people away from Ireland, away from our own concerns, not in a healthy way, but in an unhealthy one. In other words, it would return us to that condition of provincialism from which we were rescued by the founding of the State and by the Irish literary revival.
Provincialism is something that was defined very well by Daniel Corkery. It is a state of mind where you look to a foreign capital, a foreign metropolis, for your values. Culturally speaking, probably the greatest achievement of our people was the Irish literary revival and all the attendant scholarship and cultural achievement involved in that. What it did was to rescue us from the position of having once been an imperial country, a country dominated by an empire up to the Act of Union and, after that, dominated by a colonial sensibility right through the nineteenth century, and released us into a metropolitan sense of our own worth. That is a profound and brilliant achievement. I am not even talking about the physical force movement; I am talking about something far more transcendant, far more cultural, far more profound. It was one of the great modern achievements of our people.
It seems to me that the notion of putting into competition with our RTE channel this incredibly powerful and, in many ways, extremely banal station, BBC 1, which has deteriorated a lot recently and which is not at all comparable with BBC 2, would be to return us very swiftly to that position of object cultural provinciality from which the Irish literary revival and all its attendant scholarship rescued us. It would reduce us to the spiritual colonialism which existed before the founding of this State.
It is on that level primarily I am passionately opposed to the Bill, and particularly to this section of the Bill, not doubting for one moment the Minister's sincerity or the fact that he has thought deeply about it. I want to make it clear that about this I feel so differently from the Minister, that I must register the most strong and most impassioned, radical opposition to the Bill for that reason. There is another series of reasons why this seems to me an unfortunate proposal. I shall merely sketch them in outline now because, as I say——
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
I do not like to interrupt the Senator but it is on amendments Nos. 58 and 59 we are speaking at present. I have allowed the Senator make general remarks on the section, as such. At the end of the debate on these amendments, we will have a debate on the full section.
I take that point. On the other hand, I do not think I could be convinced for one second of irrelevance in relation to amendment No. 58 which says that the Minister may after consultation with the Authority authorise the Authority to rebroadcast programmes broadcast from any source other than the Authority.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
The Senator has gone much wider. The Senator is speaking on the whole section. I know it is difficult because the acceptance of the amendment would involve deletion of the section.
I take the point and I shall defer to the wishes of the Chair. The details can be discussed later. Everything that has happened so far in this Bill in which the Minister has conducted himself with such cogency, with such precision, with such scrupulous justice in dealing with minutiae and the small print of the Bill, this is one point on which I feel a major chord has to be struck. Perhaps I struck it at too much length. I shall shorten my stride a little for the next three or four minutes.
The problem is related to that notion of provinciality which I am very much afraid of and of which I am certain the Minister is deeply conscious. His writings on Joyce, Ó Faoláin and on so many aspects of Irish history make it clear that he is pretty sensitive to these matters. Therefore, he knows what I am talking about even if he does not agree, which obviously he does not. As well as that, another outstanding difficulty about the Bill, something raised yesterday by many Senators, is that it was admitted directly by the Minister that there would be no control whatever. Once the BBC was given a free charter of our airspace, we would have no way of intervening. I am very surprised that certain lobbies within the country, and particularly those very strongly right-wing Catholic lobbies, lobbies who were extremely vocal on that side of the House on the quality of Irish life when it came to discussion of the contraception issue on which I disagreed with them, are so happy. I am thinking of Senator Ted Russell, Senator Alexis FitzGerald, the Leader of the House and so forth——
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
Whatever about the Senator not speaking on section 6; he is straying very far of the mark now.
It is a very good illustration.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
Could we get back to amendment No. 58?
I did not speak on that Bill.
I must apologise. I will withdraw that. Let us say, the Leader of the House. In that debate there was expressed very strong concern about the quality of Irish life. It was sounded over and over again. The quality of Irish life is deeply relevant to this matter because BBC 1 is concerned with the quality of British life. The quality of British life is radically different from the quality of Irish life. There are a number of issues which are constantly being discussed on such channels as BBC 1 which run quite contrary not only to the quality of Irish life as interpreted by that lobby or body of opinion of which I speak but which is embodied in our Constitution—Article 40 6 (i)— where it says that nothing shall happen that shall be used to undermine public order or morality or the authority of the State:
The publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious or indecent matter is an offence that shall be punishable in accordance with law.
Within these terms the BBC could be held up to criticism. If RTE become the agency which sponsor BBC we would find ourselves right up against not only that body of opinion but certain fundamental constitutional ideas. I am merely thinking of three or four at the moment. I mentioned them last night. The general consensus on the other side of the water on abortion, birth control and euthanasia is radically different from ours.
If we approve this Bill—I do not want to be opportunistic on this matter but I am so opposed to this section, I am on the verge of being unscrupulous—not only do we acquiesce in the propagation of such a world view but we condone it; we approve it; in fact we sponsor it. Certainly we have no way of stopping it being profoundly repugnant to the moral sense of the country. Not only can that moral and religious sense of the country be affronted by the holusbolus view of the Minister's phrase— allowance of the BBC to have a charter of our airs—but it seems to me to be a manner in which we could outrage something very dear to the Minister's own view, that is, his feeling about seditious and subversive organisations. The restrictions within which RTE act with regard to the IRA and all subversive organisations are far more draconian than those that apply to the BBC. The Minister has been among the most vocal people in insisting that these provisions are recognised and respected.
While on the one hand clamping on RTE and in many ways strangling their creativity in the matter, with the other hand, the Minister is giving a totally free charter to the BBC to have any kind of interview, statement or treatment of the problem of subversion. Not alone is he allowing that but he is making the RTE Authority the agent for that. There seems to me to be a deep contradiction in the Minister's attitude towards this affair.
The main argument the Minister has offered so far is that certain parts of Ireland have this facility, therefore you give it to the other parts. There is a tremendous distinction between allowing something to happen and marshalling the legislative authority of a country to see that it happens. That distinction has to be recognised. I am not sure that, if part of the country have it, it is necessarily the job of a Government to see that the rest of the country have it. If the thing itself is not obviously and intrinsically good, I do not see a Government as having any such duty. That kind of bread and circuses philosophy could reduce the Parliament from a role of leadership within a community to a role of object pursuit, condonement and flattery of the lowest possible taste within our culture.
That provision places RTE at such gross disadvantage because RTE are underendowed. There is no doubt about that. They could be a finer station if they were given more money. Now they will be put into obvious cheek-by-jowl competition with one of the most powerful and large complexes in the world. Taking BBC 1 and BBC 2 together they are probably the most distinguished broadcasting organisations in the world. I do not regard BBC 1 as particularly relevant to Irish life or, by itself, particularly good. But, when played off against BBC 2, it is useful; it provides a good deal of the bread and circuses of English life. Therefore before we come to the minutiae of amendments and discussions of the small print——
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
Amendment No. 58 is before the House.
I should like to express my support of amendment No. 58 and my profound disagreement with the entire spirit behind section 6.
I am astounded by the narrow-mindedness of some of our academic friends at tertiary level.
We shall get more of it in a moment.
I have always been of the opinion that the influences which cause most trouble in this country are of our own making. We have become obsessed with the idea of blaming the British for everything that is wrong and bad in this country. I find it a childish mentality to think that we should not, under any circumstances, have BBC 1 or UTV.
A selection from the lot is what we want.
(Interruptions.)
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
Will Senators please address the Chair? Senator Deasy without interruption.
The proposal from the Minister is that we have either BBC 1 or UTV rebroadcast in its entirety. I do not see anything wrong with that. He is actually offering us a choice of the two best television services in the world, widely claimed as such. Surely that would be of great benefit to us.
We heard so much about the quality of Irish life and how it will be affected. Senator Yeats told us we were going to be swamped with an alien culture. I take exception to this insult to the intelligence of the Irish people. Surely, we are sufficiently mature and intelligent to sift out what is good and what is bad. Nobody in this debate has brought to light that for the past 40 or 50 years we have been exposed to BBC radio. Not so much recently, but in past years, large tracks of this country especially in the South have not been able to receive RTE radio and they had no other recourse but to listen to BBC radio. I do not accept that the people in those areas are any lesser Irishmen and women because of that. I find the whole thing an insult to our intelligence.
I take Senator Martin to task when he says that there is not any evidence that there is a majority in favour of BBC 1 or UTV; there is clearly a majority in favour. I am not going on the poll held in The Sunday Independent some weeks ago which showed that 85 per cent of the people wanted BBC 1 or UTV as the second channel. I am going on my experience as a public representative travelling about and meeting people. I feel that any other rural representative from a single-channel area must have had the same experience. There is an overwhelming majority of people in favour of rebroadcasting one of these two channels.
I take exception to Senator Dolan's remark, when he compared the Minister to Dr. Goebbels. That is a lot of nonsense. I do not think there has been any interference on the part of the Minister with the manner in which RTE have produced and broadcast their programmes. I think he has remained completely aloof in this matter. I am not afraid, repeating the clichés which are being bandied about, that the moral fibre or the cultural heritage of the people of this country will suffer as a result of this rebroadcasting. I have more confidence in the Irish people than some of the Members of this House.
I agree with a good deal of what Senator Deasy said, particularly about the moral fibre. I do not think that BBC 1, if broadcast, would affect our moral fibre. It would not do it any good, nor would it do any harm. I do not associate myself with the remarks made by Senator Dolan earlier about the Minister. I would like to put in perspective the academic case that Senator Deasy got so worked up about.
If you use the argument he has used, when television was founded in this State, we would not have RTE at all. We would just have broadcast BBC. That is what the people wanted. We would not have our own service at all. What we are arguing about here is a question of sovereignty. We have an opportunity of developing a second channel which will be mostly imported, mostly from BBC and UTV. Are we going to take that opportunity to exercise our own creative talents with some Irish programmes? Have we got the maturity to make the choice? Must we hand the whole thing over? That is what it is all about.
I do not think the moral fibre of the Irish people will be affected by whatever comes about. That is my feeling. The point is, are we going to exercise control of this second channel? The Minister said, of course, we are going to exercise control. We can always stop it. But he must know that it is one thing to start this but it is a totally different business stopping it. It is not in the same league. It would take a political upheaval to stop that.
As Senator Deasy said, BBC television is the best television in the world. It is the highest quality television in the world. RTE does not match up to that. Are we going to try to do something ourselves with our second channel which would involve some home-based programmes, the best of British programmes from BBC 1, BBC 2 and UTV, or are we just going to say that we cannot make up our minds, nobody in this country is capable of making a choice, therefore, we are going to hand it over? That is the easy way out. If Senator Deasy's argument was pushed to its logical conclusion in 1960, whenever RTE was starting, we would have no RTE. Why have Irish television?
We were given a choice.
I am giving you an even better choice. I do not know what reception Senator Deasy gets in Dungarvan but in East Cork I just get RTE. I would like to have a choice. I realise that I will have to pay more for it. But the proposal that is coming as an alternative is offering an even wider choice. It is offering programmes from BBC 1, BBC 2 and Independent Television, and, with a bit of luck, some continental or American programmes, as well as home-based material.
I am going to try to steer clear of the substantive part of the section. This is a question of sovereignty. The control we would exercise over BBC would be illustory if we rebroadcast it. The point is not that BBC 1 will do people any harm or any good; it may be what they want. Are we mature enough to make the choice? Are we going to give our television station an opportunity to do something creative? Or are we just going to say "no, we have to import a BBC programme"?
It may be that in 15 years' time we will have satellites buzzing overhead and we can pick up every television station in the world. There will obviously be big technological advances which will mean that we will receive other stations. This seems to be an even stronger argument for developing our own second channel. This is what this amendment and what section 6 is all about. Senator Martin put the point of view very well; there is a certain amount of emotion in this. As Senator A. FitzGerald said in the Second Stage debate, "nobody is going to stand up for us but ourselves".
I see a creative opportunity for us to do something with our second channel. As a legislator, I do not think I am here to give the people what they want. That is not what I see my function to be. I see my function, as an elected representative, to give them what I think they want. As an elected representative one has a duty, and it is more than just giving the people what they want. That is simplistic. I would ask the Minister to take the very strong feelings which exist on this side of the House and, indeed, among some Members of the Government, because they have expressed themselves fairly forcibly in the Second Stage debate, that it is not just a matter of counting heads. The sort of proposition he has put to get people to decide whether they want an RTE 2, which has not been put into a motion, or a BBC 1, which is already there—people will always vote for the channel they have seen. We could do something really good with this second channel. We could exert control over it—all these problems which we talked about already, the complaints commission, the problems of subversives getting a free run on the second channel if it was a BBC channel, whereas they would be restricted on the RTE channel, the matter of sovereignty, and whether we should control this second channel ourselves and try to do something creative with it. I, therefore, support this amendment.
I am not one of the persistent critics of the Minister in his general political philosophy. Far be it from me. I support a great deal of what he does. I reserve the right to criticise any specific statement he may make. He is one of the people who has underlined what it means to be Irish. I might pass on to him a very pleasant tribute paid to him by someone who certainly does not agree with his views all the time, for a recent address he gave at Stone Hill in the United States, when the man who opposes many of the things the Minister says attended that meeting and said it made him proud to be an Irishman, having heard our Minister for Posts and Telegraps addressing the American audience about the problems of being Irish, particularly at present.
In some ways the Minister does not go far enough when he tries to tell what he regards to be the truth about the situation. However, that is an aside. This is an opportunity. He should take the strong feelings that are being expressed in this debate on section 6 into account. If we set up our own RTE Authority they should be responsible for all the programmes broadcast on the Irish network. It is a question of legislative and Government attempts to set up a second channel. We should keep that second channel under our own control, in our own hands and then all these problems would not arise. These opinions have been expressed not only by members of political parties, but by all the Independent Senators who feel very strongly about this. It is the nub of the Bill.
If you live on the east coast and get BBC 1, fine, I wish you the best of luck. Here we have an opportunity to do something with the second channel which would be better than just BBC 1. We would be able to select from BBC 1 and BBC 2, Independent, and from other stations. We should take that opportunity. It is our station and we should run it ourselves.
What Senator West said is the heart of the Bill. Coming from a one-channel area it is clear that the people want multi-channel television. But, not being able to satisfy that demand, what they want is the next best thing, which happens to be to the vast majority BBC 1 and not RTE 2. Senator West said that he accepts, as a legislator, that he is here to give them what he thinks is for their good. We have got to take cognisance of the fact that this is the majority view in single-channel areas.
It amazes me in some of these debates where people can twist one argument to another. I have patiently listened to this debate, and I admire the dexterity of some of the Senators who were able to use one argument one day and another argument another day. The most important point is that the one-channel area is in a position to accept the sincerity of some of the people on both sides who have grave doubts about BBC 1. Since 1970 we have, through RTE Relays in Dublin city, relayed the other channels into the homes of people who could not get them. That was no accident. That was a deliberate policy to relay this transmission. It seems to be wrong to do so for the rest of the country. This is where I find slight dishonesty, in some cases because people realise that that has been done deliberately. Yet we are told that we are anti-national if we demand BBC 1. Maybe I have a peculiar idea of democracy but I thought that we were to try to give the people what they want now and again.
What about income tax?
Not being an academic, I probably have the wrong slant on this. At this stage, I have to say in all honesty that it has been my experience to get a lot of demands and deputations regarding multi-channel television and a choice of channels. It has been shown by the majority that they want BBC 1 as an alternative channel in the single-channel area. I would not accept the amendment because it will defeat their purpose.
The Minister must be delighted with the turn of the debate because he sought to put those of us who oppose this section in the position of defending the indefensible. The indefensible to me would be the deliberate limitation of a multi-channel service to the Dublin area and a refusal to permit it to be broadcast throughout the country as a whole. I make no attempt to defend that position, but that is not the equation. The Minister is the individual responsible for the administration and control of the State television service. He is not in a position to give the country, as a whole, the multi-channel service which is available in Dublin. If he were, of course he should do it, but not at the expense of the State service. This is the proposal being made by the Minister. In physical terms, at best, he is proposing one alternative to RTE, the BBC, or perhaps he will clarify this: does he intend to give UTV, ITV and any other foreign services which may become available to the fringe areas on the eastern coast as time goes on and as technical developments make this possible? Is he accepting—this is the important point now, he is making a very important fundamental decision for his Government and for all future Governments—that our State service is to be dwarfed and left in a totally pygmy state of development? This is to be done for some reasons which I cannot understand. Many of these arguments were used by Senator Martin with his understanding of history and his understanding of the importance of education, television services.
In the earlier part of the discussion I put it to the Minister that the television service, whether he liked it or not, had become the main source of adult education in society. Effectively, he has the power to determine the quality of the adult level of education in our society. I mean education in its very broadest terms. I do not mean the open university or anything like that. I mean the change in attitudes, values and standards which I have welcomed in its many aspects over the last 15 or 20 years—since television changed us.
Education is an extremely delicate process. Some of it has been good and some of it has been bad. It is of such a sensitive nature—the kind of milieu in which our young people grow up, live and work and learn to enjoy themselves—that it is totally unthinkable that a Minister of State in any society could accept a decision of handing over to another country this extremely sensitive role and function. I cannot conceive of the French Minister, the Belgian, German, Russian or indeed the British Minister turning over to any outside country this enormous power.
Will the Senator remain to listen to my reply?
Of course I will, if it is not too long. If the Minister had the responsibility of providing a service of this importance, what grounds could he have for using what he told us on many occasions was a limited supply of money to make a choice between spending it on his own national service or on a British service with all the implications involved in artists, technicians, administration and the optimum use of equipment? It is quite obvious that there is a capital investment in extraordinarily expensive equipment of this kind and the optimum use of that equipment once it is purchased. It seems reasonable to assume that the more services, personnel and equipment used, the better value for the money.
This is the kind of issue which Senator West said is of fundamental importance in the whole creation of a society. While I disapprove, and have said so on so many occasions, of the kind of society which we have created here in the last 50 years, at the same time I would prefer it to be the creation of our people. I have the right, and have had the right over many years, to express this difference and to attempt to change these attitudes. This is a very precious and wonderful thing which we ought to preserve. If we hand this service to an outside country, would it be because of lack of money? Would it be because we cannot afford the cost of providing BBC 1, as well as a Telefís 2 service? In this very important aspect of life in our society why should we not adopt this pattern and go back to the completely subservient colonialist position of saying that it would be much easier to send everybody to Oxford, Cambridge, Sussex or some of those wonderful red-brick institutions. People would get a very good education there. It would save us paying for our universities. It would save on staff, equipment and all the enormous outlay involved in providing these completely unnecessary services because they are there. For the fares across to Liverpool, all our young people can be educated. They have marvellous schools in Britain, too. We could send all the youngsters to school there. There are technical and regional colleges. Do we want them to get an education in that particular way? Is it not true that most us would prefer our young people to get their education within our own defective educational services, defective, as I frequently say, but within our capacity to change these defective services.
There is a first-class argument for this idea. When one thinks of the cost of books one wonders why we continue to print these manuals of instruction and education. Why can we not just send across and get them— they are all in English and are readable by our people who can read English—and we can teach them Irish history as written in England by English historians. I have a special knowledge of that because I happen to have had Irish history as taught to me in Ireland and in England.
Of course, they are completely different and totally in conflict as to the alleged facts. But one cannot blame the British for putting out what they consider to be a true interpretation of events as they occurred over the last seven centuries. One will not only be unable to blame the British in the years ahead for whatever interpretation they give in their service, BBC 1, made available to us about events here or in the North. We certainly will not be able to censor them or suppress them.
Perhaps the Minister can tell us how he plans to justify this extraordinary anomaly of taking our own service and restricting its use by putting in a section of the Bill to see that a censorship is operated in respect of the television services put out by our own station but obviously this is a power he cannot seek in relation to BBC 1.
The Minister, in his fraudulent claim that he is likely to give the people of the rural areas a multi-channel service, with all its implications of the various services available, is doing nothing of the kind. But he is adopting a particular principle which lays it down that should fringe services develop here from other countries and should they be made available in the eastern areas, whether they are French, Belgian, Russian, Czechoslovakian or whatever they may be, in some way or other this multi-channel service is to be provided by him to the people of the rural areas.
Politically it is a somewhat shady proposition which is unworthy of the Minister. In the recent Cork debate where the implication was that rural areas in Cork could get cable television—I accept that the Minister said that he did not imply that, and that they were not acting under the assumption that they could get it— the Minister was going to give Cork city to the exclusion of the rest of Cork this cable television, a multi-channel service of more than one foreign channel.
I do not want to interrupt the Senator but he seems to have got hold of a completely wrong report. I do not know what this is all about.
I will try and explain if the Minister has the patience. That is his job as Minister, to sit there and listen.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
Senator Browne to continue on amendment No. 58 to section 6.
The interesting truth about the RTE service is that there is a great variety of programmes. There is nothing in the world to prevent this kind of variety of service being made available through Telefís to a second television channel in Telefís Éireann. I have seen programmes from Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Russia, Britain, Canada and America. It is quite obvious that a second programme run by Telefís Éireann in the proposal on the lines suggested by Senator Lenihan and others of their making available a real multi-channel service without any of the defects of the holus bolus proposal of BBC 1—a multi-channel high quality service made available through the television service provided by Telefís Éireann.
Many people have commented on the apparent deterioration in the quality of the BBC services. That is a real deterioration which has happened in recent years. We can assume that because of the very serious financial condition of the British economy it is more than likely that the BBC service is likely to continue to deteriorate even more noticeably in the years ahead. This is something we cannot influence in any way at all. It seems to me very wrong that, knowing of the considerable talent, the considerable number of artists, dramatists, writers, poets, and creative interpretative instrumentalists who are available in our community at the present time, with the remarkable versatility which they have shown, with the appallingly limited funds available to them for the enormous task which they are given, they should be deprived of the creative artistic opportunities as well as the income which many of them very badly need.
There is also the question of the trade unionists, workers of all kinds, administrative workers, technical workers, scientific workers of all kinds, used in Telefís who will be denied whatever money goes to pay for BBC 1. I understand it will be considerable and an extremely difficult thing to organise from various points of view. Any money going outside the country to pay these British or foreign artists must necessarily be denied to the Irish service.
I should like if the Minister would reconsider his decision in regard to providing this service. I know well that there is a very good, in demagogic terms, vote-catching issue in going around the country saying in simplistic terms: "Those people are trying to censor—they will not give you in the rural areas what they are enjoying in Dublin". We heard something of it from the last speaker. It is not as simple as that. The Minister knows that it is not as simple as that. Because of the very grave implications implicit in allowing a powerful service such as BBC 1 to be available throughout the country, to deny Telefís the alternative channel is a fundamental decision of importance which he should not make. I make not attempt to defend the spreading of the multi-channel services when that becomes technically possible, but not at the expense of Radio Telefís Éireann.
We are moving obviously into an era of more open broadcasting. It is equally obvious to me that our present legislation is inadequate to deal with that situation. It is further obvious to me that the amendment put down by Senator Yeats is a very reasonable approach to this new situation which has been created by the spread of technology. It is altogether welcome that our broadcasting legislation should be changed in order to permit rebroadcasting. The formulation adopted here by Senator Yeats is very much to the point and not only is it reasonable in itself but it is necessary.
Obviously the main point of disagreement between Senator Yeats' amendment and the section as drafted is the substitution of the word "authority" for the word "direct". I support Senator Yeats' formulation on this. I have my own views on other matters which were brought up during the course of this debate by other Senators and indeed they were not always the same views as those expressed by other Senators but I will express those in a more appropriate place. I favour Senator Yeats' formulation of the liberalisation of legislation in this matter. We are talking about liberalising legislation and Senator Yeats' formulation is a liberalisation of the existing legislation. I am in favour of using the word "authorise" rather than the Ministerial word "direct" because I do not believe that it is right that any Act of the Oireachtas should give completely unfettered power to the Minister in a matter which is universally agreed to be of significance and of importance.
Here I find myself with some relief back on the other side of the line of which I was on the wrong side yesterday in connection with a previous amendment. This is an important matter and we must look at it very carefully. We must be very slow to give to a Minister for Posts and Telegraphs the kind of authority that is envisaged in this section as unamended by this amendment we are discussing.
I should like to make it clear that I am talking at this point and on this amendment only of the question of principle, but the question of principle is very important. I am not talking about the personal qualities of the present Minister for Posts and Telegraphs or indeed about anything that he may have said, any commitments he may have made or any wishes he may have expressed with regard to what he proposes to do if this Bill is passed in the form in which he has put it before us. There are many people on both sides of Dáil Éireann who might fancy themselves as Ministers for Posts and Telegraphs and frankly I would prefer the present Minister for Posts and Telegraphs to many alternatives on either side of the House. Likewise, I suppose, one could say that there are perhaps some people whom, at a pinch, I would prefer to the Minister in the position of Minister for Posts and Telegraphs.
But that is not the issue. The question is whether the present Minister for Posts and Telegraphs is or is not the right person to be Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. I am prepared to accept that he is and by and large I do. But this is not the fundamental issue. The issue is whether we are to give not just to this Minister, to this person who has expressed these views about what he proposes to do in a certain given situation, power in this section or whether we are going to limit this power and indeed make the whole thing much more flexible and much more publicly responsive by passing the amendment suggested by Senator Yeats. I support the amendment by Senator Yeats. I think it is reasonable, necessary and liberal.
Like most other speakers, I am against the powers given in the section. The modification proposed in the amendment by Senator Yeats, to quote the last speaker, is both reasonable and timely. I support it wholeheartedly. At least it is a logical arrangement in that the amendment would put the onus on the Broadcasting Authority to look for the permission to rebroadcast part of a programme and the Minister then would have the duty of authorising, not directing. That by any standard seems to be the only logical and reasonable way to give this power. We can tease out later what should be rebroadcast, and I remain as firmly convinced as ever that it will be a sorry day for the country if the best we can rise to is to hand over the air, lock, stock and barrel, to BBC 1 or indeed to any other television service in its entirety.
It makes a mockery of our assembling here and suggesting that we are looking for ways and means to ensure impartiality and other desirable characteristics in RTE broadcasts, if at the same time we hand over without the slightest right of even making a complaint to whoever is responsible for BBC 1 or what is being rebroadcast here. Frankly, I do not understand it and whether it is financial difficulty or what, it baffles me how we can so abjectly sell out the air waves like this.
I realise that within ten years or so we will probably be in an era of open broadcasting when all and sundry can be received, but I would prefer to have that situation rather than just to be limited to one. Until we get to the open broadcasting situation I want the second channel to be on a selective basis where we have as much control as possible. Indeed I am going for full control by having a second RTE channel where we would have precisely the same control as we have in the first, but I realise at present that we are on the amendment, not on the section. I can see the Leas-Chathaoirleach getting agitated and consequently I do not want to develop the argument against what we know the section is going to be used for, but I hope the Minister, as the very reasonable person he has shown himself to be all through this debate, will see reason in the amendment. In other words his function should be to authorise, not to direct, because after all the Authority have been set up, they should be the judges of how to select the programmes, and it is a very useful power and one I heartily endorse that the Minister should have final say, should be the authorising agent after consultation. Frankly I cannot see why the present Minister or any other Minister should be given the power of just simple plain direction in this. That does not accord with my idea of democracy or of delegation of responsibility to a body set up, like the RTE Authority, to do a specific job.
It is significant that all the Independent Members are for this amendment. This is a matter that should circulate through to the Minister's mind—that there is a very strong case for adopting a reasonable attitude in this matter. The reasonable attitude should surely be that over the next ten years, until we have satellite broadcasts, we should ensure that the State broadcasting service can be strengthened by having two complementary channels and, as Senator Noel Browne said on this point, it runs counter to the whole notion of an independent Irish station and would erode and gradually destroy our national television service. That would be the net effect of bringing in holus bolus without any monitoring or any control a BBC service on a second channel throughout the whole country over the next ten years, pending satellite broadcasting.
There is a very serious point of principle involved here. It is the whole principle of the sovereignty of the Irish State to which a number of people have given service in various ways over the past 50 years. I do not think the Minister is fully sympathetic or sensitive to the importance of this particular area which I am discussing. Ireland is on the fringe of reception from the most powerful and best financed state television transmission service in the world, on the doorstep of the British Broadcasting Corporation. We are a small independent State. We do not have a strong Army. We have not a large population. We have not got great wealth, but among the things we do have is our own State television broadcasting service.
This is the principal arm or weapon that this independent, free State has in regard to getting its case across, to its own people in particular, to ensure that the Irish nation's case is heard loudly and clearly and that we do not have this case eroded by the overwhelming insidious propaganda—I will not go into the various devious ways in which this can be done by a giant corporation such as the BBC, the insidious ways, hour in, hour out, minute in, minute out, that the British message would get across, the British message in the Irish free State, the Irish Republic established with a view to managing our own affairs, in our own way and subject to the democratic choice of the Irish people, managing our own educational affairs, managing our own industrial affairs, managing our own agricultural affairs, recognised as a free, sovereign, independent Irish State. It is one of the main weapons in its control in its own area, its own radio and television services whereby we can get across the Irish message to all people.
The Chair would be glad if the Senator would relate his remarks more closely to the amendment.
I am following previous Senators who were allowed some scope on this. I will finish very briefly on this.
Is the Senator therefore undertaking that he is not going to repeat this on the section?
No. What I am emphasising here is that in this amendment, which involves the deletion of section 6, in effect what it is proposed to do is not alone to undermine the authority of the RTE Authority but to undermine the authority of the Irish State, established as a free, independent State, and having had at its disposal a State television authority established by statute in 1960 as a free, Irish television authority and subject to various norms and criteria written into law by this Parliament to ensure that a truly Irish service came from that particular channel. We are now seeking to erode that completely. That is the net effect of the matter.
On the amendment, which brings in a rational suggestion to the Minister in the event of his not agreeing to our subsequent amendment to delete the whole section, we would prefer to see the section deleted and to leave broadcasting entirely to the RTE Authority, as established under the 1960 Act. Obviously from the Minister's attitude he does not propose to agree to the deletion of section 6, so this amendment has been put in as a rational saver to save the Minister from his own self-destructive wish——
Very kind.
I will make a rational appeal to the Minister. He and I obviously disagree completely in principle on section 6 and there is no need to go into that. There is a cleavage, philosophically and in principle, in regard to our respective attitudes to section 6. But if the Minister is to have something on the lines of section 6, let us be spared the sort of draconian wording which is incorporated in section 6 as the Minister proposes it.
I am not casting any doubt on the capacity and the personality of the Minister. This is essentially and basically a point of principle. Section 6 as worded authorises the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, whoever he may be, "to direct the Authority, after consultation with the Authority". The words "after consultation with the Authority" mean very little in that context; the word "direct" is used. If the Minister utilises the power of direction to the Authority which he has and which he proposes to have in subsection (1) of section 6, consultation with the Authority is entirely superfluous, unnecessary and irrelevant. The Minister may direct the Authority to rebroadcast programmes broadcast from any source other than the Authority and specified in the directive. That is related to subsection (2), which states:
The Authority shall comply with a direction under this section.
So the Minister may direct the Authority and the Authority shall comply with the direction. Here is a Bill that was flaunted to us in the course of a very extensive Second Reading speech as a fresh new wind, a fresh new approach, as a fine, liberal progressive measure. This is the theme running through this Bill. The Minister offered himself to us as a man of liberal ideas and advised us all to make contribution on the Bill. The net effect of it is this draconian section 6—the Minister may direct the Authority to rebroadcast as he directs and the Authority shall comply with the direction which he, the Minister, makes.
That is highly illiberal legislation. That is the sort of legislation which one would get under Amin or somebody of that kind. I know the Minister has made certain contacts with people of that kind and I hope it has not rubbed off on him. This is highly draconian language to use in an allegedly civilised section of a civilised piece of legislation supposed to be before a civilised Parliament. We are seeking to save the Minister from the odium of being associated with a section of that kind.
I will have a lot more to say on the major issue postulated by Senator Noel Browne on the question of sovereignty when we come to this section. I totally disagree with the whole philosophical approach of the Minister to the section and to his attitude in regard to delimiting our sovereignty and our control over State television broadcasting.
If the Minister has to proceed along these lines and if he does not agree with us to delete section 6 I think— again the Independent Senators in this House have agreed with this point of view—he should take a serious look at the phraseology in Senator Yeats' amendment as compared to the phraseology in section 6.
Senator Yeats proposes that the Minister may, after consultation with the Authority, authorise the Authority to rebroadcast programmes from any source other than the Authority. The Authority established under the 1960 Act are an independent Authority on the same structural lines as have been established in every other civilised State such as in Great Britain in the BBC. From the administrative structural point of view it is established as an independent corporation separate from the Minister and the Government.
Similarly in every other democratic State that pattern of administrative structure has been followed where the State television service is set up as a State-sponsored authority, financed by the State, but not run by the State as a propaganda machine, set up as an independent authority and given the money to acquire the personnel and expertise, and fitted out with a board of independent people who supervise their affairs, the chairman, the chief executive, and so on. The Authority have worked well with their ups and downs. There have been disagreements between Government and the Authority but the Authority have worked well since 1960. They are now part of our society as the BBC are part of British society. They are competent and nobody has any reason to doubt their competence.
I would ask the Minister to tell the House what do that Authority, appointed by him in toto—chairman and every member of that Authority and the chief executives appointed under that Authority with whom I am certain the Minister has had consultation —think of section 6. Would the Minister be candid enough and tell us precisely what the Authority think of section 6? Have the Authority agreed in toto and welcomed the fact that they will be subject to his direction or his successor's direction as envisaged in section 6? I would like the Minister to be frank about that. It seems to me that any Authority worth their salt—I have every respect for the RTE Authority—would go along with the sort of principle enshrined in Senator Yeats's amendment which ensures that the Authority with the authorisation of the Minister, may proceed with the rebroadcasting of programmes. In other words, the onus is on the independent statutory Authority to make the decision with the authorisation of the Minister to proceed to rebroadcast. This is what we suggest in section 6 which is eminently reasonable.
It puts the onus of making the decision on the Authority where it is properly placed as the relevant statutory authority under the 1960 Act. It places the onus fairly and squarely on their shoulders to decide in what manner or by means they will organise a second channel, and then they will proceed to the Minister with their proposals and the Minister, after consultation with them, authorises them to proceed or not to proceed. That is also implicit in Senator Yeats's amendment. There is no direction by the Minister in this amendment and no blanket direction to the Authority that they must comply with the direction of the Minister. It is the appropriate, civilised way in which an independent corporation such as RTE should proceed in their relationship with the Minister of the day. It is precisely the way in which the BBC operates and in which every independent State broadcasting corporation operates throughout the democratic world.
I should like to hear from the Minister what reasoning he can advance against the wording of Senator Yeats's amendment as opposed to his own. If the Minister does not accept my essential proposal to delete section 6 altogether, will he say in open, measured terms precisely what it wrong with Senator Yeats's amendment which preserves, on the one hand, the independence of his Authority and, at the same time, carries on and ensures the principle that the Authority appointed by him shall be in charge of broadcasting services and that we do not have incorporated in an Irish statute a situation where a Minister can willy-nilly direct the Authority and where the Authority must comply with the Minister's direction.
I am not one of these people who engage in ministerial bashing. I do not intend to do anything of that kind. I am talking essentially about the principle involved. Candidly, I do not think the Minister will abuse the section in the sense of overdirection. We are concerned here with legislation and we are writing into legislation a highly draconian section that would enable some nincompoop who may be Minister for Posts and Telegraphs to direct the Authority willy-nilly, right, left and centre, as he sees fit.
I should like to come back to the plain meaning of the section. The section puts the Authority, in so far as the second channel is concerned, totally under the thumb of whoever is Minister of the day. It is bad law. It is bad in principle. It runs counter to all our notions of what the relationship should be between a Minister of State and all the other State-sponsored bodies under the aegis of the various Departments. I challenge the Minister to tell us in what other Act of the Oireachtas there is an equivalent type of section involving a Minister's relationship with a State-sponsored board in our community. There is no such section in any other legislation dealing with the ESB, Aer Lingus, Bord na Móna, or any of the 60 or 70 State-sponsored organisations we have in this country. There is nothing as draconian as we have here in this section. A draconian section of that kind in the highly sensitive area of broadcasting is surely to be deplored as it has already been deplored by the independent Senators in this House.
I hope the Minister is open to conviction on this aspect. I know he is not open to conviction on the basic philosophy and principle underlying the section. There is a complete cleaveage there, and I do not expect him to change his mind and delete section 6 having started out on that course. I would expect him, having heard the arguments of the independent Senators in this House as well as our arguments, to have another look at the phraseology of the section. In doing that, I am certain that, if he is honest with himself, he will come to the rational conclusion that the phraseology incorporated here by Senator Yeats in amendment No. 58 is the sort of phraseology that should be incorporated in a civilised section, in a civilised Bill, in a civilised country, drafted by a civilised Minister.
To say the least of it I am shocked at what I have heard from the other side of the House. Senator Yeats said on his amendment today that he would have no objection to a rebroadcast of BBC 1 if it was under the control of RTE. Then he made the point that the woman down in Kerry might be getting the dinner while the man in Dublin would have had his dinner earlier——
That was yesterday. It was not on this amendment.
I have lost track of time with all the rubbish I have heard from the Opposition. The suggestion was that while Senator Yeats could see a race or a football match live in Dublin, we could see it down in Kerry an hour later. I wonder did he envisage looking at a race in Dublin and backing a horse with a Kerry bookmaker when he had the result an hour beforehand.
It is noteworthy that the opposition to the second channel giving us the BBC has come mainly from the people who have a choice of five channels. We all know the evils of Partition in this country only too well. Here we have the Opposition now trying to create a further partition, trying to deprive the people in the rural areas of something they have themselves. When RTE introduced piped television in the Dublin area in 1970 was there any opposition by the opposite side of the House? Was it said that the moral code was being lowered and that people should not have this choice of station? It was pointed out on Second Stage by Senator Deasy that it is only a matter of time until we will have all stations with the satellite. There was no objection from them today to all stations, the reason being, of course, there is no way of stopping it.
The facts that there are people who would bottle the fresh air we breathe so that we could only have it if they so decided. If we are to talk about democracy, or majorities, and if the majority of this country demand this service then they are entitled to it whether it is good, bad, or indifferent for them surely the majority rules. Then we are told RTE will disappear if we get the BBC. I can go back to the days of 2RN, the first Dublin station. I can go back to Radio Athlone which Senator Lenihan would be nearer to. After that station went on the air we got Radio Luxembourg and later we got Radio Caroline.
I am afraid the Chair is a little perturbed about this travelling. It seems to go beyond the scope of the amendment.
I was hoping you might allow for my inexperience.
The Senator can take it that allowance has been made. I am now asking him to come to the amendment.
I will come to the amendment. There is a demand by the people of rural Ireland for this second channel. They want BBC 1. Whether it is good or bad in the eyes of the people opposite, if the majority of people want it, they are entitled to it. If the people on the opposite side are in any doubt that they want it, let them go to rural Ireland, let them go to Cork, Waterford, Galway, where there was agitation for the second channel. When the Minister intimated that he was giving the second channel, the agitation ceased. There will be agitation again if the people do not get a second channel.
A Chathaoirleach, I shall try to obey rather strictly your injunction to confine myself on this amendment to the amendment and to points made with a direct bearing on the amendment in the course of statements here. A number of statements have been made, some when you were not in the Chair, which covered very wide ground and often covered it in very interesting and sometimes a very moving manner, as was the case with Senator Martin's intervention.
I should like to reply to those statements but I should like to reserve my reply on them to the later stage when we come to the amendment in the name of 15 Senators which calls for the deletion of this section. That is where we should have the main debate. I should like to stick here to amendments No. 58 and things which have been said which have a specific bearing on this amendment.
This amendment belongs to that category of amendments I referred to yesterday which are envisaged as improvements from the point of view of those who move them. Since those who move them are totally opposed to the objective of the section as a whole, they are another way of opposing the objective which the section seeks to achieve. Therefore, with all the goodwill in the world, I cannot possibly accept amendments of this kind. Indeed, Senators know this very well and some of them have urged the amendment on me as a reasonable one which I should accept but others have said what is true: that this amounts to defeating the purpose of the section. Of course it does. What this amendment really envisages is that RTE should be able to block the rebroadcasting of a British TV service even if that is the overwhelming choice of viewers in the single-channel area. That is what I do not accept.
As already explained, the section is enabling only. This amendment would vitiate the whole purpose of the section, which is that it should be possible for the Minister to arrange that the second television network possibly currently being installed will be used for rebroadcasting a Northern Ireland channel if it is confirmed that this is the wish of the majority of viewers in the single-channel area and if agreement can be reached with the British authorities.
Several points have been made here. Senator Yeats argued that I am dealing with this, or intend to deal with it, in a dictatorial manner. Other Senators have compared me unfavourably in this respect with the late Dr. Goebbels and our contemporary, General Amin. These are somewhat exaggerated. However, I do not think these are very seriously intended and I shall not take them very seriously. Let us consider this charge of dictating. On what is it based? What exactly is involved?
What is involved here is the use to be made of certain material, the material of a second broadcasting channel which has been provided by a decision of the Government and which will be paid for by the people. What is the use to be made of that? What does this Bill provide? It provides that the decision as to how that material will be used will be in the hands of a responsible Minister of this State who acts of course under collective Cabinet responsibility and as a member of a Government responsible to this Oireachtas and, through them, to the people of the nation. That is what is proposed. I do not see what is dictatorial about that.
We are told that this usurps the authority of the RTE Authority. There is nothing which says that the use of a second channel when set up must be decided by the RTE Authority. The Government may decide otherwise. The Government may so decide particularly if they think that that is the will of the people and especially the people most concerned —the people in the single-channel areas. That is not being contemptuous of the people. That is not riding roughshod over people. That is being democratically sensitive to what people want.
Senator West, in an interesting statement here, said that he was not going to be governed by what people wanted but by what he thought people should have. I have nothing against that as a statement of aristocratic principle. It is a very good statement of aristocratic principle. Edmund Burke, who was no democrat, declared essentially the same to the electors of the city of Bristol who thereupon refused to elect him a second time around. He turned very properly, from his point of view, to Lord Verney who nominated him to the rotten borough of Malton, in Essex. These alternatives are not available to all of us.
I do not dismiss what Senator West said. A legislator has the obligation to ask: "What do people want and what do I think they should have?" They might want some very bad things. They might want to put to death members of a minority or something of that kind. In that case the legislator has the duty to say: "They want that but it is wrong and I will tell them why and I will let the sky fall and let the consequences be what they may." But if they want something which is, at the very worst, harmless, and if it is clear they want that by a large majority and if it is something which the rest of the people already have, then I, as Minister, will pay attention to what they say.
I do not think that is dictatorial. I think it is democratic. It would be wrong to act otherwise. It is said: "I do not know what they want, I am guessing. This is just my hunch." A number of Senators from these areas have spoken, the most recent being Senator Daly, and they have told us in no uncertain manner what they think about it. However, perhaps, I am now going a little bit over the top and entering into matters of substance which I should reserve until later.
It has been suggested that if I reject this amendment and insist on the power to direct the Authority to rebroadcast, this is treating the Authority with scant respect. Senator Lenihan, for example, asked whether I could give him any example of anything as draconian as this. Let me give him an example from the Act that I am amending. Section 31 (1) provides:
The Minister may direct the Authority in writing to refrain from broadcasting any particular matter or matter of any particular class and the Authority shall comply with that direction.
There is no comparison.
There is no comparison because that is a Fianna Fáil Act.
That has a much more limited objective.
I was referring to the objections made on the score that this is too draconian and that it treats the Authority with scant courtesy. I was pointing out that, to my mind, these objections and this tender, loving care for the Authority come rather strangely from those who supported not merely the existing section 31 (1) which I read but the dismissal of the entire Authority under my predecessor for having failed to carry out a direction issued by my predecessor which he refused to clarify when the Authority sought clarification from him.
It is suggested that the refusal of this amendment indicates lack of confidence in the Authority. That is not so. I have great confidence in the Authority for conducting the affairs of RTE but the question is whether the second channel, as a programme channel, should be entrusted to RTE. That is the question. It does not imply any lack of confidence in the Authority if I say I must listen, not only to the Authority, but also to voices from the single-channel area who are the people principally concerned.
Senator Lenihan challenged me to say what was the view of the Authority. I do not think that I have got a formal expression on the view of the Authority on this but I know their approach in general. They would like RTE to control the second programme channel. They would like to have an opportunity of showing what they can do with that. I think it is very appropriate that they should hold that view. It is a very professional point of view to wish to show what one can do with an opportunity of this kind. I am not against that, in principle; I am against it only if I think, as I do at present think, that the people in the single-channel area do not appear to want that.
I made on the Second Stage, what I regard as a very fair offer, that is to say, that RTE should put on a programme, or series of programmes—as much as they like—in which they could reach the people of the single-channel area who, after all, cannot see any other television but what RTE give them, and give an idea of what is their concept, why it would be more satisfactory than the alternative concept and so on, and then get a reaction, ask for audience reaction from the area; see what comes in. That is one way of testing opinion. I think it would be more satisfactory than a newspaper poll, though a newspaper poll is interesting. Indeed the results of a newspaper query held recently are interesting. Of course, the views of elected representatives who are responsible to people in their areas are extremely interesting.
All these methods of testing it should be and can be used. I have said that if the responses to these programmes convince me that the people in the single-channel area would be happy with an RTE 2 of the kind eloquently advocated here, made up of different elements drawn from different places and so on; if the people in the single-channel area were convinced that that would be more satisfactory, I would be extremely happy to authorise that. But I cannot leave the matter simply in the hands of the Authority in a situation where the wish of the Authority may be in conflict with the wish of the people in the single-channel area. I cannot leave those people out of account and say: "Oh, I will just listen to the Authority, they are experts in this matter and the wishes of the people who might be looking at the thing do not count." I do not think that is democratic or proper.
This is all leading up to the point of the amendment. This sounds nice:
The Minister may, after consultation with the Authority, authorise the Authority to rebroadcast programmes broadcast from any source other than the Authority.
As Senators well know if, in present conditions, I were to authorise the Authority, after consultation with them, to rebroadcast BBC 1, they would undoubtedly thank me for my authorisation. But I think they would not rush to act on it nor do the Senators. This section, as distinct from this, leaves the decision as to use of the second transmission channel provided by the Government, on behalf of the people, to be made by the Government on behalf of the people through the responsible Minister.
I shall not follow the Minister down the line he took, which perhaps related more to section 6 than to this amendment, but I should like to take him up on his point about the direction in section 31 of the Principal Act. Quite obviously this direction was on a very minor matter compared with that covered by section 6. In any event, I would remind the Minister that it is not only he but some other people, both inside the Houses of the Oireachtas and elsewhere, objected very strongly to this power. The Minister, on the Second Stage of this Bill, speaking on the 12th of March, at column 794, had this to say about the power conferred by section 31 of the existing Act as follows:
... a power which is without limitation of any kind whatever. I wanted to get rid of this absolute power, so obviously capable of manifold abuse,...
In this amendment we want to get rid of this absolute power so obviously capable of manifold abuse.
Amendment put.
The Committee divid ed: Tá, 14; Níl, 24.
Tá
- Brennan, John J.
- Browne, Patrick (Fad).
- Dolan, Séamus.
- Eachthéirn, Cáit Uí.
- Garrett, Jack.
- Hanafin, Des.
- Horgan, John S.
- Lenihan, Brian.
- Martin, Augustine.
- Quinlan, Patrick Michael.
- Ryan, Eoin.
- Ryan, William.
- West, Timothy Trevor.
- Yeats, Michael B.
Níl
- Blennerhassett, John.
- Boland, John.
- Butler, Pierce.
- Daly, Jack.
- Deasy, Austin.
- Ferris, Michael.
- Halligan, Brendan.
- Harte, John.
- Higgins, Michael D.
- Kerrigan, Patrick.
- Kilbride, Thomas.
- Lyons, Michael Dalgan.
- McAuliffe, Timothy.
- Markey, Bernard.
- Moynihan, Michael.
- O'Brien, Andy.
- O'Brien, William.
- O'Higgins, Michael J.
- O'Toole, Patrick.
- Owens, Evelyn.
- Russell, George Edward.
- Sanfey, James W.
- Walsh, Mary.
- Whyte, Liam.
Tellers: Tá, Senators W. Ryan and Garrett; Níl, Senators Sanfey and Halligan.
Question declared lost.
Amendment negatived.
Amendment No. 59 not moved.
Government amendment No. 60:
In page 7, subsection (1), lines 47 and 48, to delete all words after "rebroadcast" and substitute "in its entirety a service of programmes specified in the direction and broadcast from any source other than the Authority and so specified.".
Section 6 (1) was designed to empower the Minister to direct the Authority to rebroadcast a complete programme service from other broadcasting organisations. As originally worded, it was open to the interpretation that the Minister could also direct the Authority to rebroadcast individual programmes, or a series of programmes, broadcast by another broadcasting organisation in RTE's existing service. It is considered undesirable that the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs should have this power because of the risk of erosion of the autonomy of the Authority that might arise. Accordingly the amendment has been redrafted to make it crystal clear that the Minister's power to direct the Authority applies only to rebroadcasting of a complete programme service from another broadcasting organisation. This point was rightly raised by some Senators during the Second Reading debate and this follows, in part, on their request for clarification.
It goes somewhat against the grain to say it, because I have my difficulties with the course of action proposed by the Minister, but in the light of what I said earlier on the definition section, it occurs to me that the drafting of the Bill might be improved by the insertion of the word "simultaneous" somewhere in this section, as amended by him on Report Stage. I merely make that suggestion.
I wonder does this amendment make bad worse, because it says that it is to direct the rebroadcast in its entirety. Does that mean that one cannot have any element of selection at all in that second channel? Supposing some European events clash and it is not possible to allocate time on the second channel for a rebroadcast of any programme from any other broadcasting service. The purpose of this amendment is to make that crystal clear. If we take home events, we are all anxious to have the maximum of home-produced material on programmes. Our people are quite sports conscious but there may be very often a clash of interest between games. Very often there is the Football Association of Ireland final conflicting with a hurling semi-final or a football semi-final. Both have very substantial audiences. In that situation it would be impossible to say that the first channel would broadcast one game and that the second game would be broadcast on the other. That seems to be squandering opportunities for producing home material, when we make so much about the choice of the viewers.
In other words, it looks almost like Government by consensus or by continuous referenda. When we make so much of that, I would wager anything that, on the question of games, the position is regarded as highly unsatisfactory, where one had to have one game replaced at a certain stage on a Sunday afternoon with another game cutting in. We would get half of the first half from Croke Park and go over to Dalymount Park for the second half. Surely if viewers were polled on that aspect, they would say: "Let us have the games in their entirety." That would be home produced. That is something we should encourage. It appalls me to think that the second channel must be so tightly structured that that is not possible. I am all for democracy but there were many cases in the past in respect of which we appealed to the present or previous Government for referenda but were not allowed them. It is not part of good Government to be led always by what the majority think at a particular time. A Government are committed to a policy; a Government——
I am afraid the Senator is going very wide. This may be Referendum Day but this does not entitle the Senator to speak——
I am so appalled by the slavish approach that we are making to the second channel. It baffles me. During my 20 years here I have not been so baffled by any section of a Bill as I have been by this one. I want to know is there any valid reason. There must be a reason somewhere, but where is it?
I support absolutely what Senator Quinlan has said there because if one had the other arrangement, the arrangement of a second RTE channel, with flexibility and selectivity, one could serve our people far better, particularly the rural constituents whose case has been pleaded so plaintively by the other side. In rural Ireland, of a Sunday—Senator Quinlan is perfectly right—there are many people, who would like to see Dalymount and many people who would like to see Croke Park. What one will be stuck with under this system is not an opportunity to see both of these but a choice of seeing one of them, or bits of each of them, on the one hand, and on the other a piece of Rugby League from Lancashire or Yorkshire. Maybe that is not what the people of rural Ireland are looking for in the second channel.
This must bring home to us very clearly the absurdity of handing over completely the running of the second channel to BBC. In other words, we will not be giving our people the service to which most of us feel they are entitled. We were always in favour of giving them a second channel but that second channel being completely BBC 1 is nonsense.
Senator Quinlan has made an interesting point which is answerable on technical grounds as well as on policy grounds. He says that this amendment totally rules out the possibility of any sort of split programming on the two services which will be available on a national basis. There are two kinds of split programming: split programming within the hours in which BBC 1 would be in operation and programming outside those hours, on the second channel, assuming that this is what happens to the second channel. I should like to ask the Minister would it still be possible on the technical level for native productions of one kind or another to utilise a second channel at a time when the imported channel was not on the air?
I should like to protest, too. Senator Quinlan has made the point adequately. Here we have a resource. We are shoving it even more into the lap of the BBC and are ruling out any possibility of flexibility, or of using our own creative talents. This is only making the whole situation worse.
I have already, on the Second Reading, opposed the handing over of our airwaves to a foreign country. To think that we are now going to hand it over in its entirety to another country is frightening. We fought for a long time to free our country. Handing over our second television channel to a foreign power at this stage is appalling. We still believe that only the best is good enough for our people and we should select only the best programmes from other broadcasting systems.
I should like to stick to the amendment and to the points which were made about it. Senator Horgan suggests the addition of the word "simultaneously". I am certainly prepared to consider that on Report Stage.
Senator Quinlan referred to himself as baffled by the proposal. I do not know why any Senator should be baffled by this because it is, in essence, extremely simple. Its simplicity is both the cause of its appeal and the cause of resistance to its appeal. The Senator understands it very well and anyone who can undertake many more complex problems than this certainly is not baffled.
It is very, very simple. It proposes that people in Galway, Cork, and Limerick will be able to receive BBC 1 just as people in Dublin receive that service now. It is as simple as that. We do not seek to interfere with the reception of BBC 1 here. We could do so by making cabling illegal. We have allowed it to expand, to proliferate, as it has so richly proliferated. Here, from among all our wires and among our television sets where people are engaged in multi-channel viewing all the time, we then hold forth, a little sanctimoniously, and ask why we should pollute the unpolluted west and south with these reputedly bad transmissions. We think of them as bad when we think of other people seeing them. We apparently do not think of them as bad when we are seeing them ourselves. Whatever Senators may think the idea is simplicity itself.
All this amendment does is to remove a possible reading of the section as it stood and under which the Minister would have had the power to say to the Authority: "Oh, I saw a show I rather liked the other night; you put that on" and the Authority would have to put it on. That would be really usurping the power of the Authority. I do not regard it as usurping the powers of the Authority for the Government to determine what use should be made of the second channel to be provided. It would be usurped were the Minister to be given the power, over the head of the Authority, to say they should put on that particular programme or this particular programme, because I, my wife or my neighbour like it, or something like that. That would obviously be an undesirable power which the Oireachtas would not want to confer. This section removes the possibility of a misunderstanding of the original. That is the only change being made. The basic proposition, whether you like it or not, remains always the same. The viewer in Cork, Limerick and Galway will be able to receive BBC 1 as people in Dublin do.
Business suspended at 5.35 p.m. and resumed at 7 p.m.
Before we adjourned I confessed to being baffled as to why we should restrict ourselves to a single choice. Could the Minister explain why, even if it is going to be rebroadcast, can we not have a selection? I am prepared to allow any Authority to make that selection. Why cannot part of that second programme be reserved for items like those I mentioned— matches or other overlapping functions—that can be provided quite readily from our own resources? Is the impediment solely financial and what are the costs involved? We on both sides of the House are all baffled by this. Perhaps the Minister could clear those points.
This is a question which has been thoroughly covered. I am not in principle necessarily against a selection such as is urged by RTE themselves. They say we could edit a very nice selection and this would be the best of everything, even better than BBC 1. If RTE can convince the people in the single-channel area that that is so, I have pledged myself in advance to accept their will. Such indications as I have so far, indicate that they do not want a selection. They want a straight rebroadcast of one or more, preferably more, outside channels. They want what will bring them as near as possible, in technical conditions, to what the people in the multi-channel area get.
We have gone through all this fairly well. I am agreeable to providing the people in the single-channel area with a selection, if that is what they want. I think that when approximately 50 per cent of the people are in the single channel we have to pay careful attention to what they want. Many of them, not all, have spoken on this subject and have said what ought to be provided for them. I do not come from a single-channel area but I am aware that Professor Quinlan does. With respect, he is only one voice and I have heard many, many more voices saying: "We do not want a selection. We want straight rebroadcasting." I may have got the wrong end of the stick. Many Senators who have spoken here are quite convinced that I have not got the wrong end of the stick. I have a pretty shrewd idea myself that I have not got the wrong end of the stick, and I think some Senators on the other side of the House are aware of that.
I have got to take account of the preferences of half our people living in the single-channel area, not just the preferences of the RTE Authority, estimable and good people though they are, and not just the preferences of Senators, much though I respect them, but what the actual people living in the area want. If I am wrong about what they want RTE can ascertain that and represent the advantages of the kind of selection system which they, like the Senator, think is a good idea. If they get a positive feedback to that idea, I will look at it again. This Bill does not commit me to providing BBC 1. I have been honest and frank with the House. I have said that I am inclined to grant priority to BBC 1, but I am not committed to that.
Senator Dolan said the idea was preempted because the machinery is going in. The sites for the transmitters are being set up and the whole thing is being prepared. Of course that machinery can be used for any kind of second channel. It will be required whatever type of second channel is needed, whether it is RTE 2 or BBC 1. That provision does not pre-empt anything. Until something occurs to modify my present conception, which is that the people in the single-channel area, by quite a large majority as far as I can see, prefer direct rebroadcast, I must give that priority.
One of the checks referred to was a poll conducted by a very widely read Sunday newspaper, which indicated an 85 per cent preference for rebroadcasting, BBC 1 or UTV, over RTE 2. In the other Chamber those who are directly elected by the people in the single area will have to take a good hard look at the situation.
Senator Browne suggested that there were votes in this, as if it were very sinister for democratic politicians to pay attention to votes. We do pay attention to votes, because that is what democracy is all about.
I fail to see, even yet, how the Minister can be so emphatic and so certain that he has already attained, through the Sunday newspaper or some other means, a fairly accurate assessment of the opinions of the people in the single-channel area on this matter. I know of many parts of this country where people have never even seen a rugby match, or would not have any idea what side was winning if they saw it on the screen, because the game had never been traditional in the area. When such a game in which they would have no interest was being broadcast, it would only be reasonable to give them a choice of programme, for example, if Muhammed Ali was boxing in Africa and the programme was being relayed from another station. I am not so emphatic in my beliefs that I would deny people a choice. From my reading of this Bill, the Minister is foisting BBC on the people whether they like it or not. We should give them both channels, paid for by Irish taxpayers' money, and let them choose for themselves. It would be better if it were under the authority of the State. But let the people select the programmes.
The Minister stated that he would be prepared to consider selective rebroadcasting if he felt the people wished it. Selective rebroadcasting would mean programmes taken from other services. Within selective rebroadcasting, would the Minister concede that where a home-produced programme was available, as in the case of overlapping functions such as matches and so on, it would qualify in such a selection? If the Minister could meet us in that way we would have some grounds for hope. At the start there might be very little home-produced material available, except competing sports functions. Once that provision was there, it would be up to the market to make it grow. If we could get somewhere in that direction with the Minister we would feel that we had reached a reasonable compromise.
Certain members of the Opposition persist with the idea that only a minority want rebroadcasting of BBC 1 or ITV. I hope this is not turned into a deep-rooted debate which could end up by the public demanding a referendum on the issue. This is not wanted. The matter is clear-cut. I wish people would accept that. The Authority want what the Minister has proposed. In recent years the minority groups have been getting their way as to what we, the majority, have to watch at peak periods. This has been an intrusion on our rights. I am completely against these people dictating to us.
The majority opinion should be the one which is relevant, the one that is invoked. Senator Quinlan, when speaking about rebroadcasting a variety of programmes from other channels, misses the point completely. The most attractive programmes on BBC 1 or ITV deal with political discussions, topical events and current affairs and if they were rebroadcast the next day would entirely lose their effect. It is because these programmes are topical that they are interesting. Both of these networks do these programmes so well that we should be very glad to be able to receive either of them.
Why not rebroadcast them simultaneously?
I asked a question on Second Stage. If a reciprocal arrangement were made whereby RTE television and radio would be broadcast to the whole of Northern Ireland, does that come under a different section?
It comes under the same section but not on this amendment. It would be preferable if the Senator raised the question afterwards and if the Minister answered when the section is being discussed.
Senator Dolan raised the general question: "Why do I think that this is what the people want?" The indications I have so far are not conclusive, but they point steadily in a given direction. One indication is petitions very widely signed in Cork, Galway and Limerick involving several thousands of signatures. Another indication is resolutions passed by a number of public bodies in the Cork area and, I believe, in other areas also. Another indication was the question put out by the Sunday Independent, which pointed, as far as its readers were concerned, overwhelmingly in that direction.
The indication that has weighed with me most strongly, because it was most direct and most face-to-face with the people, was the reaction I found during the Galway by-election. I am not bringing in the subject of by-elections or party matters here. But this was a time when an effort was being made by the Senator's party to claim that multi-channel television was possible for Galway. This became an issue in the election because it was suggested that I, as Minister, who was actively campaigning on behalf of Senator Higgins who sits here—there is no secret about it—was preventing the people of Galway from having multi-channel television for some reason that escapes me. This was a very prominent issue in the by-election campaign because I was identifiable as the Minister responsible. At almost every door I knocked on— and I knocked on a good many doors in Galway—virtually everyone I met raised this subject. They all said they wanted multi-channel. I said that I thought multi-channel for technical reasons was unlikely for them in the near future and that the immediate choice before them lay between BBC 1 or a second RTE channel in which there would be a selection of the best material—at least that which was deemed by RTE to be the best—from outside.
Everybody reiterated first their preference for multi-channel if they could get it, and secondly, as between the alternatives, for BBC 1 as against RTE 2. I may have knocked on all the wrong doors but no door was opened to me in which people said that they would rather have RTE 2 and did not want BBC 1. I thought this was a legitimate point to which I thought I made a legitimate response. RTE are inclined to say that "When people say that they think they are going to get the present RTE all over again and that is not fair to us", that is why I put it to them: "You explain to the people what you want and see if you can change their opinion".
I regard those indications, taken together, as not constituting total proof, which would be a very difficult thing to get, but as a strong indication. I have no serious indication running the other way. I am not rushing to conclusions. I am leaving the matter still open to debate. I have offered RTE this opportunity to put their case to the single-channel area and, I understand, they are likely to take that opportunity. I am glad they are doing it. The result of that sort of demonstration, followed by a poll, should be about as conclusive as we can get in this area.
I am anxious to be fair to those who argue in favour of a selection of what is called "complementary" programmes. As regards the form it should take, supposing RTE show the people in the single-channel area what they have in mind here and the people in the single-channel area give a positive response and say "All right, now that we understand it, we would prefer a second complementary channel involving edited programmes mainly from outside, but with a little home-produced material, running in a complementary way with RTE 1", then I would certainly leave the working of that under either the RTE Authority themselves or under some body which they set up. They might perhaps bring in some other people to help with the editing. Once it appeared that there was support for the idea. I would be content to leave the organising of the complementary channel, which is their concept, very much for their execution. But—and it is a big "but"—I would need to be convinced first that that is what the people want, or if it is not what a majority of the people want, that the people are at least about equally divided on it.
I am not by any means bigotted in my predilection for BBC 1. Contrary to certain suggestions that have been made here by Senator Dolan and others, it is not because I have some enormous admiration for the BBC that I insist on purveying it to the people of the single channel areas. It is very much the boot on the other foot. I regard myself as having a democratic responsibility to take into full consideration what the demand is among those who at present have no choice: what they would regard as a good choice.
As I said, I have formed a preliminary assessment of that, which is subject to correction. The point in my amendment—I have wandered a little bit from it, but I have been following others rather than leading them—and in the section as a whole is that the Government, who are responsible to the people through the Oireachtas, must have the power to decide how this machinery for the second channel, which they are providing on behalf of the people and with the people's money, should be used. That use shall be fair to the people most concerned, that is, those living in the single-channel area.
With the exception of some high-minded and public-spirited people, such as are heard in the Oireachtas from time to time, most people in the multi-channel area do not care too much about this subject. They are not preoccupied with it. They have a considerable measure of freedom of choice already. They might say that the second RTE channel might be interesting, but they are very apathetic about it. On the other hand the feeling in the single-channel areas, as far as I can see, is quite strong and is rising in force as this matter becomes more urgent, in the sense that the final choice will have to be made within a fairly short time. The choice is not made in the Bill; the choice will be made later. This is an enabling Bill which keeps the power of decision in the hands of the Government and it is not handed over to RTE. The amendment which was offered just now would have handed it over, but that has been rejected.
I appreciate what the Minister said, that his function as a Minister of the Government must be that he must be seen to be fair to all sections of the community, multi-channel and other areas. That being so, I am sure he must know that there are areas where Radio Telefís Éireann reception is not what it should be and that in many counties Radio Éireann is not heard. His first priority should be to ensure that RTE would be heard throughout the thirty-two counties. That is the first point.
Secondly, he made the point regarding his assessment during the campaign of the Galway by-elections. When a Minister goes round knocking from door to door, and puts the question frankly to people, he will get replies. I was at the East Galway by-election and it was never an issue there as far as I remember. It was never raised with me. Incidentally, we won that by-election.
The Senator does not happen to be the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs.
The Minister overlooked my crucial question: if he decided to instal a rebroadcasting system that provided for the selection, would that make it possible for the broadcasting of home-produced features, such as games that overlapped?
I should make a clarification here. The rebroadcasting of a selection is essentially a different concept. The rebroadcasting in mind here is retransmissions of the whole programme service. If it is decided to have a complementary service, a group of people would make a selection from the products of outside organisations and could include some home material which they could weave in and would be complementary to RTE 1. I would not interfere in that process. If it is the verdict of the people that RTE should have their second channel on this complementary basis, I would leave to RTE the exact form it would take. I would no more interfere in the second channel than I would interfere in the ordinary programming on RTE 1.
I am in some difficulty here, because the question we are discussing in this amendment has been defined several times in different ways. Am I correct in thinking the Minister said "The question is whether the second channel is to be entrusted to RTE or not". As I understand it, this is a combination of two things—the section, as amended by his amendment here, plus the things he said in his Second Reading speech and outside this House. It seems that the second channel is being entrusted to RTE, but that RTE are being told what to do with it. There appears to be a conflict here which should perhaps be resolved.
Could I interrupt briefly, and I will attempt to resolve it.
I will be brief. It seems that the RTE Authority were set up statutorily to provide a national broadcasting service. It also appears that what the Minister is advocating and what many people appear to want does not fall under the heading of a national broadcasting service and could not be so described. If the Minister were logical, he should set up another structure to run this relay service.
"Channel" in the material transmission sense is one thing and the programme service that goes on it is another. RTE would, as I envisage it, operate technically the channel in any case. The question is: what is going to go out on that channel? Is it a programme service edited by RTE, or is it a rebroadcast service which might be BBC 1 or UTV? I have indicated a preference, which follows what I believe to be the preference of people in the single-channel area, for BBC 1 or UTV. I have also indicated that my mind is open to the extent that if RTE can demonstrate the superiority of what they have in mind, and if people in the single channel area care to accept that, I am also prepared to do that.
Did the Minister come to this conclusion after discussing this problem with people he met when electioneering in the Galway by-election where they have only one channel? I have had the advantage of having all these channels for some time. I am at a loss to know how these people were able to advise him that BBC 1 was the ideal channel to accept. I watch these channels very carefully. I am not in a position to say whether BBC 1 or BBC 2 should be selected. If I had to make a selection I believe BBC 2 would be more acceptable than BBC 1. The very people who would advise the Minister to accept BBC 1 would be the very people who would try to pull him down if they were not pleased with the service.
I suggest that reasonable consideration be given to accepting BBC 2 because it is much more informative and educational. It does me good to see the Minister smile.
Having said that, I must again ask the Minister how did the people advise him? He has already stated that he never saw BBC coming to the occasion of an All-Ireland or some other football match. I should say that sport is definitely one of the things that people are attracted by in modern times. To my mind it represents one-tenth of the viewing on any channel. I would ask the Minister to consider BBC 2 in preference to BBC 1 or UTV. It is more instructive, informative and much more acceptable to me, and I believe the vast majority of the Irish people, than any other channel.
Senator Brennan said: "I am one of those who are fortunate enough to have the alternative". This is the advantage he has over Senators like me who are not fortunate enough to have the alternative. What we are looking for and asked the Minister for —he has been asked in Waterford, Cork and Galway—is at least an alternative. As I now read the Minister, and as he said in his Second Reading speech, he has given Telefís Éireann the opportunity to prove to people in the single-channel areas if they can produce anything better by RTE 2 or otherwise and if not that BBC 1 will be readily available by rebroadcasting simultaneously and that this section provides for the wishes of the people. After all, this is what it is all about— the wish of the people. Those who are advantaged at the moment have expressed wishes for those who are disadvantaged, as Senator Russell said. We cannot have it both ways.
The Minister's amendment No. 60 to me is the whole matter in a nutshell. I do not think that there is any other option in a democratic State than to give the people the right to decide. Whatever they decide, this section can abide by the wishes of the people.
Does the Government amendment as it is phrased allow the possibility of the option that the Minister says he is prepared to consider? It provides:
In page 7, subsection (1), lines 47 and 48, to delete all words after "rebroadcast" and substitute "in its entirety a service of programmes specified in the direction and broadcast from any source other than the Authority and so specified.".
Does that mean that programmes could be specified from two or more broadcasting services or does the entirety tie you to deciding that we have got to broadcast the entirety of BBC 1, that is, from the moment it comes on the air until it goes off; or does it mean that "entirety" refers only to individual programmes in that service? We say that we would broadcast programmes 1, 3, 5 from BBC and that other programmes from other specified areas have got to be broadcast in their entirety. It seems that the Government amendment ties the Government to just one service and one service only.
Surely it is only reasonable to expect that if the Minister was given the choice of a second channel he would rather not tie us to one particular station such as BBC. It would only be natural and to the advantage of the country as a whole, especially to those who are looking for a second channel, if he would pick the best from BBC 1, BBC 2 or UTV rather than shove BBC 1 across. There are many parts of BBC that are objectionable.
A good deal of ground is being covered that has, I think, been covered fairly well before, most of which does not seem to be very closely related to the amendment. There are some points I should try to answer. One very legitimate point of Senator Brennan asked how were the people I met in Galway in a position to advise on BBC 1. I should clarify that. It was not so much that they were committed to BBC 1 as against UTV or indeed against BBC 2. What they were very emphatically committed to was live rebroadcast of an outside channel. They might have been divided as to which channel. They were all people to some extent who had been to a multi-channel area, whether on the Northern Border or on the east coast, and they had all seen some of these delights Senator Brennan is able to see too.
As regards BBC 2 or UTV, there is nothing in this Bill that would preclude the Government from choosing BBC 2 rather than BBC 1. I was very interested in the Senator's preference for rebroadcasting BBC 2, which he seemed to prefer to RTE 2. At least he did not mention RTE 2. If the Fianna Fáil Party were to tell me that they would prefer BBC 2 to BBC 1, that is certainly a fact that would weigh with me, again democratically, because I know that party still represent a very large section of the population. If they wanted BBC 2 I would certainly be prepared to consider that.
This section pre-empts nothing. That comes up in relation to Senator Quinlan's question, too. It says:
The Minister may, after consultation with the Authority, direct the Authority to rebroadcast a service of programmes.
He may also not.
A service—one service?
Yes, one service. There is no need to repeat this. This thought seems to be so simple that it is surprising that the subtle minds of Senators do not assimilate it. The idea is live rebroadcast of a full service without editing, without cutting into it, simultaneously and so that people in the single-channel area may receive at least one channel from outside in the same way as Senator Brennan, for example, receives four or five. Senator Dolan is also in a position to receive it. That is the simple thought in it. I think Senator Horgan said: "well could this second channel be used, in times when BBC 1 or UTV, or whatever, was rebroadcast, was not on the air, for another purpose?" Certainly it could.
I am very pleased to hear the Minister make that statement. There is a reason to be satisfied and in fact there is a choice. I am glad to know that, because I am quite convinced that some of the people over here were taking it for a joke. There is nothing wrong with that, I suppose, it is part of the act. With my limited degree of intelligence I would tip my hat and say that BBC 2 is one of the best channels anywhere in Western Europe.
A Senator
Hear, hear.
The choice the Minister is offering is that he is prepared to consider either rebroadcasting or he is prepared to consider a second RTE channel, including selection. But does the Government amendment not preclude that second?
No. It does not preclude anything. There is nothing in this Bill or anywhere else that would prevent a Government decision to hand over the second channel to RTE if that is what they decided to do. That is covered by the existing legislation. This is the new aspect which has to be covered if the Government are to retain full control over the situation.
Is it not a type of Hobson's choice?
Amendment put and declared carried.
It is suggested that amendments Nos. 61, 62 and 63 be debated together.
I move amendment No. 61:
After subsection (1) to insert a new subsection as follows:
"(2) Every direction made by the Minister under this section shall be laid before each House of the Oireachtas as soon as may be after it is made and, if a resolution annulling the direction is passed by either such House within the next 21 days on which that House has sat after the direction is laid before it, the direction shall be annulled accordingly but without prejudice to its validity prior to the annullment."
I would like to say at the outset on this amendment that while I voted in favour of Senator Yeats' earlier amendment No. 58 and believe that it was liberal, sane and sensible, this does not necessarily mean that I am totally in favour of allowing the Authority to have total suzerainty over all the programme services that people may obtain in this country. We are about to get a second channel of some description. I am in favour of allowing the fundamental decision as to what channel should be used to be left with the Government. If the decision is to broadcast an imported channel in its entirety as is envisaged by the section we are amending, I do not believe that should be any part of the function or responsibility of RTE even in a technical sense. I am in favour of the Government taking the basic decision about what form the second channel to be available in this country should take. I am also in favour, not least because of the huge grey area that surrounds this at the moment, of building into the Act a system of review of any decision or decisions that the Government may make.
The second channel, we are informed, may be on the air in about 18 months. In 18 months' time the present Minister for Posts and Telegraphs may no longer be Minister for Posts and Telegraphs.
He might be Taoiseach.
I am not ruling out any possibilities, and I hope it will not be taken in any party sense when I say that I hope that in 18 months' time the present Minister for Posts and Telegraphs will still be occupying that chair. We have got to accept that he may not be. There may be somebody else. There may be a new Government. Anything can happen between now and the time the technical feasibility of the second channel becomes a fact. We may have a Government or a Minister for Posts and Telegraphs who may want to subject us to something totally different from what we have heard.
I am not suggesting that we would be landed with Albanian television or anything as exotic as that, but in this section without my amendment we are giving the Minister not only carte blanche to make the decision, which fundamentally he has to be given the right to do, but we have no parliamentary mechanism of reviewing that decision. The mechanism which I have drafted in amendments Nos. 61, 62 and 63 is essentially the mechanism of the negative order, in other words, that the Minister can and may and perhaps should make his decision but that if there is a controversy at a national level about it, it should be open to either House of the Oireachtas to say that as the elected representatives of the people we believe that the Minister has made the wrong decision and should rethink the situation.
We already have a situation early on in the Bill in which the whole business of sacking any individual member of the RTE Authority can be subjected to this kind of parliamentary review. To my mind the question which is involved in this section is more important than the sacking of any individual member of the Authority. It is at least as important as the sacking of the entire Authority. I hope equally devoutly that the Minister will never be forced to adopt either of those courses of action. If it is important, and if it is as important as this, some form of parliamentary review should be built in.
If I may again quote the Minister more in paraphrase than a direct quotation, he defined the question in another way during an earlier discussion when he said the question is whether people in Galway should get BBC I as clearly as they get it in Dublin. With due respect to the Minister, my highly educated brain has scanned this Bill several times and I can detect no reference to Galway and no reference to BBC 1.
There are choices of massive significance available to the Minister under this section. It is extremely important that these choices should be subject to some form of parliamentary review. To give one example, without going into it in too much detail, the simple question of whether if BBC 1 happens to be unavailable the Minister takes a decision to rebroadcast UTV or HTV, we would then be in a situation totally different to the BBC 1 situation. Instead of having the simultaneous broadcast in competition with the national station of a non-profit making, non-commercial station, we would have the simultaneous broadcast of a profit-making commercial advertising-seeking station in which the element of competition would be redoubled, squared perhaps. It would go up in terms of geometric progression.
We are dealing with situations so widely different in their implications that we must build in some possibility of a corrective mechanism—not necessarily because I distrust the intentions of this Minister but that I believe we must build as much of a corrective mechanism as we can into the Bill for future Ministers and future Governments. I am particularly anxious that in this debate very few people have made any particular distinction between the problem posed by the rebroadcast of BBC 1 and the problem posed by the rebroadcast of UTV or one of the British commercial channels. I have my problems even about broadcasting BBC 1, but I am absolutely convinced that if we rebroadcast one of the British commercial channels we would be paying for our own executioner.
I commend this amendment to the House. It is very clear. The only other way in which it might be drafted would be to make it an affirmative order, in other words, that the Minister's directive could not take effect unless an affirmative order had been passed by either or both Houses of the Oireachtas within a specified time. This is unnecessary. I prefer the mechanism of the negative order. It has many precedents in legislation. On a matter as important as this it is absolutely essential.
I am very glad to accept amendment 61 in the name of Senator Horgan. I feel this partly meets the point made by some Senators that the Oireachtas was being asked to give wide enabling powers under section 6 to the Minister to direct the Authority to rebroadcast programmes in the absence of information about the programmes that would be rebroadcast. It is entirely in the general spirit of the Bill to include this new subsection. It is also characteristic of the way in which the Bill has been improved in passage through the Seanad, which very much justifies the step of introducing it here.
Amendment No. 62 I also accept as a necessary consequential amendment arising from my acceptance of amendment 61. I am in some slight difficulty about amendment No. 63 in that it looks like an alternative to amendment 62 but I may not be getting that straight. I have already indicated that I am prepared to accept amendment No. 62 consequential on the acceptance of amendment No. 61. However, I am prepared to discuss this matter with the Senator between this and the next stage so that we may get a wording in amendment No. 63 which is fully satisfactory.
I am grateful to the Minister for the spirit in which he met the amendments. I take it that the procedure then would be, assuming the House would agree to amendments Nos. 61 and 62, that amendment No. 63 would be withdrawn and if necessary reintroduced, or a version of it, at a later stage.
I also am very encouraged by this. It is an amendment I support and I am glad the Minister has agreed to the substance of it. It is, as the Minister has said, a matter of considerable controversy what will go out on the second channel when it has been established and this at least gives us a second bite of the cherry. It is very important. One of the things that worried me most of all about the Bill as originally drafted is that it seemed we were abdicating our responsibility as legislators, because I agree with Senator Horgan that the Government should make the decision, but if the Government are to make the decision they should give the legislature a chance to review this decision and discuss it. By accepting these amendments this will now happen. Therefore it encourages one that the Minister is prepared to accept it and to see the good sound legislative common sense behind it.
Like Senator West I wish to join in thanking the Minister for his approach to this. We are encouraged. It is a worthwhile amendment and will bring the various directives under the scrutiny of Parliament in a useful and rational way. I wish to be associated with the thanks to the Minister for his open and quick approach to this. Might I say also that I like the technique by which he did it because previously Government Ministers in accepting amendments generally would say they would bring them in at Report Stage but they do not quite give credit to the mover of the amendments. They said: "Our amendment has gone in. You withdraw it and the Government will bring up something similar at Report". It is more open that it should be done in this way.
In looking at the wording of the amendments again, it seems to me that we might land ourselves in some trouble by accepting No. 62 and shelving No. 63. It seems to me that effectively the situation is best met by a sort of amalgam of the two. Rather than try to do it on our feet right now, the best thing might be to accept No. 61 and then to work on the amalgam of Nos. 62 and 63 in the intervening period. For example, effectively the best amendment would be to read amendment No. 62 as:
In line 49 to add to subsection (2) "unless it has been annulled by a resolution under the preceding subsection"
and then add from amendment No. 63:
"but without prejudice to its validity prior to the annulment".
I think effectively that is the sort of phraseology that we should work on, but as long as amendment No. 61 is accepted the only thing that one needs to draft after that is the saving clause.
I agree with the Senator.
Before going into the section, I should like to record my dissatisfaction with these amendments which the Minister has with some alacrity accepted, for this reason. If the provisions of section 6 are implemented it will obviously involve an enormous exercise in negotiation, in consultation, in financial commitment to the BBC or whichever other second channel is admitted. It is therefore easy enough to say that here in these amendments there is the mechanism for the annulling of that. It is also a fact that once section 6 is implemented the reversal of its provisions would be a really mammoth undertaking.
Therefore, though in terms of legislative formulation these amendments are reassuring and consoling such massive complicated arrangements with a foreign station mean that these amendments would be considerably diminished. I say that at this stage in reference to these amendments before speaking in a general way on the entire sweep and range of section 6.
I take Senator Martin's point but I think his fears are rather excessive. It is clear that with this proviso no final arrangements can be made with any outside corporation before the matter has been discussed here and indeed approved here. If I am negotiating with the BBC and we are getting up to a final stage I have to say—they will know anyway: "This has to be approved by the Oireachtas and therefore, it does not become final". Then the direction I give to RTE is in a sense, until approved here, of the status of a draft direction and nothing can be final. That is the substance of the matter.
I thought it was post facto.
It looks as if it is but it is not in substance.
Senator Martin has a valid point because, as he said and as everybody will realise, the arrangements for rebroadcasting a British station will be so large and so complex and involve such a large financial commitment that when the direction has been made—at that stage the public will know which station the Minister plans to rebroadcast, there will be no way of keeping it quiet—it will cause any Government an enormous headache. There will have to be a tremendous hold-fast if the direction is annulled by the Oireachtas. Therefore the problem is one of prejudicing the issue by having the arrangements already made, arrangements that are so complex and that will have stimulated so many desires in the public mind that they could cause any Government a great deal of trouble and pain in terms of lost votes if the arrangements were then annulled by the Oireachtas. I think the amendments are adequate, but Senator Martin has put his finger on a problem and it also cements my opposition to section 6.
I cannot expect consensus with those who are fundamentally opposed to section 6 as a whole. I have tried to meet points that I felt I could meet but of course there are fundamental problems in relation to section 6 as a whole. We will be coming to that soon. I do not think that either the largeness or the putative largeness—because they have been very considerably exaggerated by some speakers in this debate—of the financial commitments or their complexity really create any particular problem here. The financial commitment will not be finalised—any Minister would be very foolish to finalise such a commitment—before the Oireachtas approval which is required is secured.
Similarly, the complexities that have to be considered—mainly complexities in relation to copyright and matters of that kind—are either overcome or not overcome. Either way, if the Oireachtas decide against it, it is gone. I will not attempt to deceive anybody about this. That does not mean that a Government who were introducing this would not have to mean business and a Government who were introducing it would mean business and would try to carry it by a majority in this House and in the other House. You can say that is a pity but you would at least—and Senator Horgan's amendment gives you this, and it is an important change—have an opportunity of debating it thoroughly and any disadvantage in what is proposed would thereby be ventilated. In relation to the amendment I do not know that I can go any further than to accept it.
I was about to make the point made by the Minister that the acceptance of this amendment makes no change whatsoever in section 6 because the Government in power naturally have the majority both in the Seanad and in the other House and the Members in each House will do what the Minister wants.
There is one point I should like to make arising from what the Minister said. I was not in the House when the sums were mentioned. I guess the Minister means that in the general debate outside the Houses or inside it sums have been mentioned.
A Senator mentioned £5 million.
There is one thing I should like to clear up about that. The Minister said that no Government would be able to conclude a financial deal before laying a resolution before the House. He would be in a rather strange position if he laid a resolution before the House and then came before us and said he did not know how much the thing was going to cost. He would have to have the finances narrowed down pretty well. He would have to know what the proposed financial element would be before he could face an Oireachtas which might be questioning him and which certainly would be questioning him on the matter of finance.
Could I try to clarify this? I am surprised that this seems to be creating such difficulty. The amendment says:
Every direction made by the Minister under this section shall be laid before each House of the Oireachtas as soon as may be after it is made and, if a resolution annulling the direction is passed by either such House within the next twenty-one days on which that House has sat after the direction is laid before it, the direction shall be annulled accordingly but without prejudice to its validity prior to annullment.
Once that becomes law the Minister will be obliged to tell his partners that he cannot finalise any arrangement before this is through. Of course he will be asked what are the terms and conditions of the arrangement and of course he will have to say. There should be no secret about it. This will be in the public domain. There will, therefore, be an opportunity for a full debate knowing essentially what the proposed arrangement is. That is what this amendment gives us. To my mind, it is no insubstantial thing and not entirely a small concession on behalf of the Government, which will have to go through processes which otherwise they could have foregone. Because the Government want to act on the principle of sustained review by the Oireachtas, they accept this amendment as entirely consistent with that. I am sorry but I cannot help it if a Government have to have a majority and use that majority. That is part of democracy.
I admit the Minister has very readily accepted these amendments and I am often suspicious when this happens, because I feel it is the sugar-coated pill approach.
As long as the Senator sticks to the coating while we are still on the amendment.
The Minister has accepted that the sacking of a member of the Authority would be done by both Houses of the Oireachtas, so I cannot see that it is a wonderful concession for him to accept this amendment and allow the same thing to happen so far as the matters mentioned in the section are concerned. As a rural Senator, I am concerned that he mentioned £5 million as being the cost involved and I am wondering where this £5 million is to come from. It is probably not my business. Is it coming from the British Government because we are using their station and putting across their propaganda?
My point was that £5 million was a figure out of the air. It has no bearing on anything under discussion at the moment at all. It was a guess. I do not know whose guess it was. It was a wrong guess but it was somebody's.
There is quite a financial obligation involved in this at any rate so far as I can see. I was wondering if the Government were being paid by the outside channel which will use this £5 million. It seems we are handing over to them a free channel to broadcast anything they like in our country under this section.
I share Senator Dolan's difficulty here but it would be mean not to salute the fact that the Minister has accepted these amendments, especially when he knows there will be a civilised onslaught on the entire section very soon. On the other hand, we will certainly have to ask before the debate is over whether the Minister has done his sums, whether, in fact——
The Chair is quite perturbed about this incursion into finance. The amendment before us at the moment is concerned with the question of an annulling resolution in respect of an order made by the Minister.
Could I ask the Chair whether, at the top of page 7, "section opposed" comes under the same aegis as these amendments?
No.
I take the point, a Chathaoirligh, and I will bow to your judgment on the matter with only one remark, that it would be interesting to know what the figures are ultimately for this arrangement.
While we would prefer to see the elimination of section 6, and, indeed, for all we know, the Minister may agree to do so before the night is out, it would be unrealisic to deny or not to concede that acceptance of these amendments is an improvement in the Bill. At the same time, I do not think we should exaggerate the extent of the improvement. As Senator Ahern rightly pointed out, the Minister has, per se, being a Minister, a majority behind him in each House. The Minister has said he cannot help that, that it is a fact of political life but, in the light of that, we should not consider too highly the results of accepting these amendments.
All it means in practice is that, after the Minister has given a direction to the Authority under section 6, he has to go through a debate in one, or more likely, in both Houses of the Oireachtas. The debate will not change anything. There are enough votes stamping in behind the Minister in each House to push the thing through. It would lead to a debate so the Minister would have to sit for a certain number of days in each House and listen to what was said. That is all it amounts to. There is no legislation to prepare. It is merely a matter of taking up a few days of parliamentary time with the Minister listening to the debate.
The fact that he has already made a direction which has been sent to the Authority who have been instructed to begin working on it immediately shows that the Minister and the Government will have made up their minds. They will not be swayed by what is said in a debate of this kind. They would, of course, be swayed by votes if there were enough of them, but there will not be, as the Minister has said. That being so, all this amendment does is to expose the Minister and the public in general to a debate on this matter. A debate is always useful. Views are expressed, but that is all there is to it. It does not in any way circumscribe the despotic powers given to the Minister in section 6 under which he can say to the Authority: "Hand over your second channel to the BBC or whoever it happens to be". The acceptance of these amendments does not in any way change the situation. It has merely the advantage, which is not to be neglected, of having a debate after he has done this, not before.
Having regard to the Minister's statement perhaps it would be wise to move amendment No. 62 at this point.
Can we get rid of amendment No. 61 first?
Amendment agreed to.
I move amendment No. 62:
In line 49, to add to subsection (2) "unless it has been annulled by a resolution under the preceding subsection".
I would be prepared to shelve amendment No. 63 when we come to it on the understanding that any tidying up that was needed on amendments Nos. 61 and 62 can be done between now and Report Stage.
Amendment agreed to.
Amendment No. 63 not moved.
Question proposed: "That section 6, as amended, stand part of the Bill."
After some skirmishes on the fringes and at times not entirely on the fringes we now get down to section 6. This section is for many people, and by no means only for those of us who belong to the Fianna Fáil Party, the bedrock of the Bill. I suspect it is the real reason why we have a Bill at all. The Minister decided to do this and found that he needed legislation and hung a variety of other matters on the Bill. I strongly suspect that this is the reason for bringing in this Bill. It is by far the most objectionable section in this Bill. Indeed, "objectionable" is far too mild a word. It is a most dangerous section and, indeed, one as I stated on Second Reading, I would never have believed would be put into a piece of legislation by an Irish Minister.
The Minister said over and over that all he is doing is reflecting public opinion, and so on. Anyone can have that opinion about public opinion. It is not an easy thing to assess, as all politicians know. The one thing I have not heard from the Minister or anybody else is how it can conscientiously be said that a very large number of people who, simply by the accident of geography have never heard or seen programmes from BBC 1, can be so unanimously enthuiastic at the thought of having BBC 1 coming to their houses. They are, according to the Minister, very enthusiastic at the thought of getting a programme which the vast majority of them have never even seen.
I put it to the Minister, without going as far as Senator West seems to have gone, that the supposed majority view of public opinion is not necessarily the only view that ought to be considered. If the Minister is going to extremes along the line he is going, he might consider tidying up the whole process and, while giving RTE 2 to the BBC, he could give RTE 1 to UTV. If, according to himself, people are so anxious to have British television broadcasts going into their homes, this would appear to be the tidiest and neatest way of doing it. Then he could abolish the RTE Authority altogether.
However, obviously the Minister does not wish to do this. The reason why he would not seek to do this— although he might not put it this way —is that he feels there ought to be an Irish television service. According to the Minister's own canons, it would be a complete abandonment of all kinds of national principles to eliminate altogether the Irish element in our television services. This leads one to the further point that, at a time when there is a constant and increasing amount of competition from abroad —not merely in television but also in films, radio and written material of all kinds—we ought to try and strengthen Irish institutions rather than weaken them. This is not entirely a cultural matter. Obviously a great deal that goes out on television could not by any conceivable stretch of imagination be described as cultural. It is more a concept of what we might describe as Irishness. The desire of every country, particularly small countries, is to assert their own individuality, while not opposing importations from abroad in the field of entertainment and literature.
We are Irish with a small country and a population of some 3,000,000 people. We are next door to a large country with a population of nearly 60 million people. We are a member of the European Economic Community with a population of some 250 million. In these circumstances, even if we wanted to, we could not possibly escape from influences from outside, nor should we wish to escape from influences from outside. A certain levelling of our national life, provided it is not entirely from one direction, can be nothing but a good thing. In present circumstances we need to avoid taking any steps which might weaken our national sense of individuality. Possibly the greatest single influence on the ordinary man in the street of all these various forms of entertainment is television. It has an importance in the lives of people that nothing else has. Neither films, nor the printed word, nor radio, has anything like the influence on people and their lives and ways of thinking that television has. The nature of our television service and, in particular, the extent to which it is an Irish television service is of fundamental importance to us.
What the Minister is saying is that because there is in the eastern part of the country so much competition from abroad, because there are several television networks which can be seen or heard, we should spread this competition by deliberate act of a Government service throughout the rest of the country. I, on the contrary, would put it to the Minister that he should look at it in another way. He should look at it quite simply and say: "We have now the possibility, due to international agreements, of using a second series of frequencies, of starting off a second television service in Ireland, and simply because we have all these outside influences working on our people, we should counter them by ensuring that, even though obviously it must include a great deal of foreign material this second channel will be under Irish control".
This is not a narrow matter of national feelings or national culture. It is simply a matter of trying to maintain some kind of Irish individuality in a world which is tending increasingly to become assimilated in mass culture groups—if one can use that phrase. To do as the Minister suggests, to bring in one completely foreign service as half or more than half of our national television service to be put out on RTE 2, could do nothing but harm to this sense of individuality that we have.
The Minister says that, after all, in the eastern part of the country we can look at a number of different channels and yet it does not seem to have done us all that much harm. That is in no way relevant to the realities of the situation. There is every difference in the world between a man who is sitting in his own sitting room, listening to a foreign programme, an avowedly foreign programme, that he knows to be a foreign programme— it makes no difference whether it comes down a cable or through his aerial on the roof; it is a programme which he knows his own country has nothing to do with; it comes from Belfast, or Wales, as the case may be——
Has Belfast nothing to do with his own country? I notice the population of Ireland is 3,000,000.
The BBC comes from Belfast. I use the term "Belfast" simply because it is technically where the transmitter is, but the BBC programmes comes from England. The proportion of local Northern Irish programmes is very small indeed. As I said on Second Reading, if the Minister were to propose that every programme—and I include in this, news commentaries, interviews with Ian Paisley, or Mr. Craig, or any of the others—originating in Northern Ireland was to be broadcast by RTE, I would be in favour of this. It would do us a great deal of good. The BBC programmes broadcast from—all right in our own country—Belfast are not Irish programmes. They are not Northern Irish programmes. They are British programmes coming from England. We should be realistic about this. For the Minister to pretend anything else is doing his own case, such as it is, no good.
The Minister proposes to hand over RTE 2 to this foreign service. There is this clear distinction. Whereas up to now people in the east of the country or the northern parts of the country in the Republic—and I speak for convenience sake of the Republic which is, after all, the area to which this legislation relates—in looking at the BBC or UTV have been, and are known to have been, looking at a foreign station. You take what is said, or what appears, or what is done on this service in the knowledge that this is a foreign station. A citizen of France who sees a German or a Belgian programme, if he happens to be near the border, knows that this is a foreign station. He may or may not enjoy it but he looks upon it in this light.
If the Minister gets his way our own national chain of television transmitters, maintained and paid for by the Irish people, will be broadcasting as part of our own programmes these television programmes from the BBC from England. This is a different situation entirely. The degree of influence on our people, the effect on our people, would be totally different from what it has been up to now. The Minister may smile as much as he likes but there is every difference in the world between seeing a programme coming from your own transmitters, your own television station, and picking it up on an aerial on the roof, or down through a cable, and knowing that it is a foreign concern.
The Minister was very strong on the proposition that, after all, this had to be done because within the next eight years satellites would be transmitting up to eight programmes and, since this is coming anyway he might as well do this. Even if the Minister were right in this—and I do not think he is—it would be a much stronger argument for saying that, in the interim, until we have this enormous flow of competition from six or eight different networks throughout our country, he should ensure that the Irish television service is strengthened to the utmost possible limit. So far as I have been able to get any information about this, it will be at least 15 years before there are satellite transmitters. The cost will be enormous and the continuing cost is likely to be very high and the technical problems of persuading other television stations to broadcast their programmes through the satellite are enormous. The chances of our having these transmissions within the foreseeable future do not look at all promising on the information I have been able to get. The Minister is being altogether too optimistic. Even if he were right it would be a further and a very strong argument for saying that he should do everything possible to strengthen the Irish television service in the meantime.
Has the Minister considered the reaction of Irish people to these BBC programmes? He says in his optimistic way that everyone who has not seen BBC 1 is dying to see it. I suppose it is a case of far off hills are green— what you do not know you think is probably better than what you do know. We can certainly say that the vast majority of the lobby of people who have been pushing BBC 1 have never seen a BBC programme.
Does the Senator really suppose that nobody travels in this country?
A small proportion.
Certainly they have not been seeing them day after day and they have not, in most cases, a sufficient knowledge of BBC programmes to be able to make a considered judgment. The Minister is mistaking a natural dislike of some of the programmes on RTE for an active desire to have the BBC instead. There are two different problems. Has the Minister considered the reaction of Irish people, or the ordinary Irish man in the street, to the slanted news that inevitably we get on BBC about Irish affairs, the sort of sneering attitude we tend to get to Irish people and Irish things. If the Minister ever did get this BBC programme under way, he might hear some very strange and hostile remarks from the generality of viewers here.
I should like to ask the Minister again—I asked him on a Second Reading and he declined to answer and said he would deal with the point on Committee Stage—about the legal problems of transmitting these foreign programmes. They seem to me to be very great indeed. There is the problem, first of all, of persuading the BBC to do it, paying them whatever they ask for it. Then there is the problem of settling with all the various interests who prepare these programmes, who would be entitled to additional fees on foot of their rebroadcasts by the Irish television service. There is the multitude of problems of copyright, performing rights and other interests of that kind which would fall to be considered. These interests could undoubtedly sue the Authority for damages or fees in the event of this being done without their claims being settled. There could be enormous legal problems involved. It is very difficult to see how the Minister will be able to solve them.
There is also the problem of the trade unions, including the Minister's own union. The Minister has been very casual about this. All he says is that those who fear for their jobs are wrong, that there is absolutely no reason why anyone should lose their employment and that there is no problem of this kind.
Under this proposal there would be two programmes being sent out by RTE, the Irish programme, and then the much more extensive programme of the BBC. First of all, the BBC would be running much longer hours. They have programmes at times of the day that RTE do not. The number of hours per week would be considerably greater. They have the advantage, which is not an inconsiderable one, that there are no advertisements. RTE, unfortunately, because of the nature of their financing, have advertisements and it is surprising how aggravating it is for people to see these constantly. They have a situation where, for example, a similar series such as Kojak or something like that, if it appears on RTE fills the full hour; if it is done by the BBC it takes 50 minutes, the difference being the advertisements. As between a programme with advertisements and one without them, there is a built-in advantage to the BBC. There is the practical point also that, in the Republic, we have a population of three million. The BBC is financed by a country with a population of almost 60 million. The average income per head is considerably greater; even in a semi-bankrupt England the average income per head is considerably higher than here. Therefore, the financing of the BBC is on an enormous scale compared with anything Radio Telefís Éireann can afford.
The Minister answers a point such as this by saying: Does not this show that Irish people will prefer to look at BBC; is not this an additional argument for doing the BBC instead of an Irish service? This is no answer at all. It is perfectly obvious that if one was doing a television programme with unlimited funds, one is much more likely to be able to produce something which will appeal to a very wide circle of viewers than if one is doing it on a relative shoe-string. Inevitably, any Irish television service will be done on a relative shoe-string.
The Minister is putting the only television service we have into competition with an enormously rich, foreign television service which runs without advertisements, for much longer hours, tends to start earlier in the day and go on later at night. This type of competition would be impossible for Radio Telefís Éireann to live up to. The extreme likelihood is that one would have a gradual falling-off in listeners to RTE and a gradual increase in those looking at the BBC. This is not a question of the Minister presumably saying this is a reflection of public opinion. It is not; it is a reflection of the kind of money and resources generally which can go into making these programmes.
The advantage of having a great deal of money—if one is operating a television service—is that one can buy the best talents in the world. If one has sufficient money there is no limit to the people one can get. We have not got that kind of money and we never will. By putting the BBC into direct competition in this way with Radio Telefís Éireann there would be an inevitable fall in the listenership of RTE, and therefore, also in the amount and nature of the employment available to the trade unions. I am not suggesting that we should allow the interests, no matter how important they may be, of any section of trade unionists to govern the way we run this country. But I do think it is an important factor which the Minister might well consider particularly since his own union is involved. However important this may be, what is worrying me more, from my national point of view, is not simply the jobs that would be lost but the effect that this running down of the service would have on the country. It would mean, in effect, that in a short time we would be totally dominated by this foreign television service, not merely in the east but all over the country.
I do not know to what extent one can say that a national way of life is affected by television. Perhaps it is; perhaps it is not. Television certainly has some influence on maintaining our separate identity. The Minister's activity is undoubtedly going to increase the foreign aspect of that influence and decrease greatly the Irish aspect. This is a most dangerous proposal. It is a proposal that no Irish Minister should have put before us. I do not think that statistics, whether justified or not, about what the Minister claims people want, affect the issue. The Minister should hand over the second television channel, not necessarily to RTE, but to an Irish concern of some kind. If he wants to set up a separate organisation in competition with RTE, that might be a good thing. I suspect it would be economically wasteful but nonetheless one can put up an argument in favour of it, which would answer the argument of people who, because they had only one channel from RTE, are tired of looking at it and would like something different. If the Minister really wants something different he could give it to another Irish concern, but I do not think that is necessary.
As the BBC found when they set up BBC 2, the fact of having a second channel under the control of the same organisation led to there being enormous improvements in both channels, because it gave more scope for programming than any one channel could do. The Minister should, therefore, set up a second Irish channel; see how it goes; if he is not satisfied with that—presuming that he is still here—he can always reverse this idea of his and come back with another piece of legislation. I am convinced that if a second channel were set up on the lines that many of us have suggested there would be very general satisfaction both in the eastern part of the country and in the west. The Minister, in considering—as he does all the time—the people in the single-channel area, and of course their interests are of very great importance, might also consider those who live in the eastern part of the country, very many of whom would certainly prefer to have a second Irish channel available to them. From every point of view — for all of the population — no matter where they might live — once it had started and they had seen how it worked, they would be in favour of a second channel.
The Minister's proposal that RTE should ask people what they think does not solve anything. How can you ask people whether they would like a second television programme they have never seen? You can tell them the types of things that are going to be on it. But that is no great help until it is seen how the programme works out over a period of weeks, months or even years.
Instead of launching on this extraordinary and almost crazy experiment, the Minister would be far better off going in for the experiment — if he likes to call it an experiment — of having an Irish second channel and see how it works out and what people think. I think the Minister is right in thinking that there are a number of programmes on BBC which would be of interest to people in Ireland. I think that he is wrong in thinking that it is a good idea to broadcast the whole BBC output, including slanted news bulletins. They have a great deal of material which is purely English in style and is not of any particular interest to Irish people.
If there was a second channel, between the two Irish channels, taking their programme-planning between them, they would be able to provide us with the best, not merely from the BBC but also UTV and indeed from other countries in the world. From the point of view of Irish people, that would be a more varied type of programme and entertainment than could ever be got from BBC 1. Between the two programmes anything that is worth looking at — and I include in that both high brow and low brow, from pop to symphony concerts, on BBC and UTV could be fitted in between the two programmes. But this business of launching the whole thing holus bolus is an extraordinary concession.
I understand that the BBC themselves are amazed that this proposal should have been put before them. Certainly, I gather that the BBC people in Belfast simply were unable to understand it. They could not understand the Minister's attitude. They thought it a most extraordinary thing at a time when, all over the world, those involved in television and outside it are becoming increasingly exercised at the great danger that their countries will be completely overwhelmed by foreign influences. They could not understand that, under these circumstances, we had a sovereign Government actually trying to put across this notion. I find it very difficult to understand. Obviously, Members of this House have found it very difficult to understand. The Minister should take special cognisance of the fact that the only people who have supported him have been his own sworn and indeed whipped supporters. Even at this late stage, I urge the Minister to think again, to start off this second channel on an Irish basis and see how it goes. If nobody likes it, if everyone wants to get rid of RTE, then let us think again about the whole thing. But it seems to me that the ordinary, natural reaction of an Irish Minister should be to think Irish first and only as a last resort think foreign.
At the beginning of my approach to this section, I should make it clear precisely where I stand on a number of issues, if only to make it clear that I do not necessarily agree with all the sentiments that have been expressed on this side of the House. Indeed I disagree validly with some of them. I am not in disagreement with the Minister on what he says about opinion in the single-channel area. I put it to myself, if I were somebody living in Roscarbery, or Schull or Ballydehob and was faced with the choice of two things — one, BBC 1, a programme I have seen on my visits to Dublin, although I do not have to go as far as Dublin to do so, which has obviously impressed me as being a crisp, professional and well-done type of operation and, two, a programme called RTE 2 about which I know absolutely nothing except about which I have very dark suspicions that it may be like RTE 1, I think that the average punter in the west, in the present single-channel area will go for BBC 1 rather than RTE 2 in those circumstances. The Minister is not exaggerating when he says that this is, by and large, the current of opinion in the present single-channel areas.
I did a modest survey of my own some time ago. In the course of sending out a circular to some of my constituents, I put in an open-ended question on open broadcasting. Relatively few thought it worth while responding. What surprised me slightly was that, of those from the single-channel area who responded, a majority were in favour of RTE 2. I suspect that they may be in minority in the area in which they find themselves. The total numbers were not large but certainly 70 odd per cent of those from the single-channel area who replied to this particular query actually preferred RTE 2 on a number of grounds with some of which I would not find myself in agreement. Before leaving this point, I might make one other mathematical gloss on the Minister's statement, with which I agree, about the numerical strength of feeling in the present single-channel area.
I do not know how many people at the moment in this State are in the multi-channel area. The figure we have heard from time to time is about half. The Minister is faced with a very real dilemma here. I suspect it is a dilemma which people have not taken sufficiently seriously and with which I would not be at all happy to be confronted were I the Minister involved. On the other hand, he has roughly half the population wanting something very strongly which indeed he would like to give them. There are probably just as many people who have it already and who might take some exception to being asked to pay at least part of the cost of providing it for somebody else. This is a real political problem and a real political dilemma for the Minister. Although I have my personal disagreements with the idea of making the second channel available to another station, brought in from outside in its entirety, if this was the case, I would not engage in a one-man strike or refuse to pay part of my licence fee on the ground that I was already getting the new thing that the Minister was now providing west of a certain line. But he may come up against this problem if he insists on this solution to the second-channel area. It is as well to put this gloss on his mathematics. It may well be true that the single-channel area is solid in terms of what they want. I am not altogether so sure that the multi-channel area, which may involve just as many people — in democracies majorities can often be very small— are that willing to pay extra for something they are getting already.
The second point I would like to make is that I am not really in disagreement with the Minister on the whole question of employment in RTE. On the Second Stage I made a fairly strong case against giving the second channel to a foreign station on the ground that it would affect materially employment in RTE, lead to a run-down of employment in RTE and so on. In the intervening period I have been thinking about it and I am less convinced this is the actual case. I suspect that employment in RTE might remain more or less the same. What I do fear is that the quality of the work which is being done by the same number of human beings involved in RTE will, in some sense, not be the same as it is now, that perhaps it might be worse than it is now and that all these people who will, hopefully at least, continue to be employed in RTE will be employed more and more in attempting to compete with the BBC against the kind of obstacles Senator Yeats has mentioned.
The third thing that I should like to say, and I say this very strongly, is that I am not in any sense a cultural isolationist. The points the Minister made on Second Stage in this respect were very telling; that anybody who attempts to oppose the rebroadcasting of BBC 1, for example, purely on cultural grounds is on a very inadequate wicket. There are much stronger grounds for opposing this. The cultural ones are not the ones which will make up our minds for us one way or the other, certainly not in this society, in this age, at the stage of civilisation we have reached.
May I pray the indulgence of the House for a moment to give an example of the kind of attitudes that cultural isolationism has led us into in the past and indeed may lead us into in the not too distant future? I had hoped that we had got rid of much of our cultural isolationism. Here in a booklet that was published in my lifetime, when I was several years old, is one of the classic examples of the kind of cultural isolationism which betrays some of the strongest arguments against the rebroadcasting of BBC 1. This is from a booklet called National Action: A Plan for The National Recovery of Ireland, published in 1942 and 1943 by the GAA. In its chapter headed “National Games and Pastimes and National Action” the following paragraph appears:
Dancing is a universal and, of course, a legitimate form of amusement. Forms of so-called dancing, not in conformity with either Christian or Irish standards, have come into this country from abroad in recent years. These Negroid imitations, and their many undesirable associations, like an epidemic out of hand, have ramified through every corner of the country. Foreign fashion and snobbery have adopted them. It will take national fashion, backed by national spirit, to drive them out.
Irish dances are modest, graceful, stylish and distinct. It is a fundamental characteristic of Irish dancing that the nearest approach to contiguity is the joining of partly-outstretched hands. They should secure universal clerical and parental support.
Some previous owner of this booklet has scribbled in the margin at this passage the single word "nuts". It is easy to exaggerate and lampoon. That booklet was published some 30-odd years ago, a generation ago — when so far as I know all of us in this House were alive. We are still fundamentally part of the generation which, in many cases, believed this and believed it with a passionate fervour; believed implicitly that any threat to the way of life depicted in this kind of extract was a threat to them personally and something they could not abide by any manner. I am not a cultural isolationist. I have a point to make about culture later on, but certainly not that one.
All we have to go on really when we discuss the effects of this section is what the Minister said in his Second Reading speech about what he proposes to do. I am glad he has accepted the amendment regarding parliamentary review. What the Minister has said is that he proposes to utilise the section, if at all possible, to rebroadcast BBC 1 throughout the country. I must say again, at this point, that in principle I think it would be a splendid idea to rebroadcast BBC 1 all over the country. I would think it even more splendid, like Senator Garret, if BBC 2 rather than BBC 1 were rebroadcast all over the country. But possibly we cannot have everything we want. Here I must enter a caveat: if we are going to broadcast BBC 1 all over the country, it must not be at the expense of the national broadcasting service, a broadcasting service which was set up by an Act of 1960, an Act which I suspect is, to some extent, being misused by making it the umbrella for something which, however laudable or attractive it may be, could only by the wildest stretch of the imagination be described as a national broadcasting service.
I am not against giving people what they want. People should have what they want in so far as it is consonant with public policy. They should have also a national broadcasting service in the fullest possible sense of this word. I do not think that these should be presented to people as alternatives. The unfortunate thing is that this is what they are in danger of becoming if we get, as an immediate consequence of this Bill, a single second television channel totally given over to the programme of BBC 1 or some other imported station.
To my mind the Minister has a dual responsibility here. He has responsibility to the electorate, including— and perhaps especially in this context— to the people in the single-channel areas. He also has a responsibility to the national broadcasting service. I remain to be convinced that both these responsibilities will be adequately discharged if all that will happen is the rebroadcasting of a channel from outside on the second channel. I need hardly stress at this point that the rebroadcasting will cost quite a lot of money. How will the Minister discharge his responsibility to the national broadcasting service in this situation? Although I dislike the idea of subsidy other than from licence fees and advertising from the national station, I dislike the idea of State subsidy for the national station. I should like to see the Minister matching, pound for pound, any money he is giving as payment for a broadcasting service originating outside the country, money indeed which would contribute fairly substantially to our balance of payments problem. I would probably be satisfied if he gave 50p to the national broadcasting service for every pound he gave to the foreign station, in effect, for every pound he is paying for this imported service.
I suspect it might well be financially possible for RTE to run a second national channel for about half the cost of paying for all the rights questions and so on for an imported channel. If we had this happy situation we would then have a very much greater degree of choice than at present exists, a very much greater degree of choice then would exist in the single-channel area even under the Minister's proposed dispensation. They would have in effect three channels. I would remind the House, in passing, that while we are technically discussing only the second channel at this point we have been allocated more than one frequency above the frequency that we have at present. There are a whole range of possibilities available to us here and we should not trim them too narrowly at the ones we are discussing at present.
I would be very strongly in favour of the Government and the Minister backing up their belief in the national broadcasting service, a belief which is in many important respects underwritten by this Act and by its predecessor in financial terms. I would like to see them putting their money where their mouths collectively are. Whether or not this should issue, an RTE 2 channel in any case is a matter for discussion. In any case, RTE should be given resources in some sense proportionate to those which would be exported from the country under this proposal.
Finally, I would like to refer to the cultural argument I mentioned very briefly at the beginning. The Minister and I had an interesting discussion on Second Stage debate about high culture and mass culture and which of us was the culturalist. The kind of thing that I am afraid of happening if the Minister's proposal is all we are going to get in the immediate future, is that RTE would either become a pale imitation of BBC 1, because it is not so much in competition with it, or it would throw in the towel and become essentially a service for minority viewers within the area of this State. This might suit some people. It might suit some of the viewers, but I suggest very strongly that RTE would not in that situation be anything that could be described as the national service.
The Minister said that in eight years' time we will probably have all stations anyway, given that resources are not so scarce. Are we going to pay £X million now for something we can have in a few years' time, or should we not also take radical steps to protect, develop and extend our national broadcasting service, not excluding the allocation to it of another channel?
Ba mhaith liom san céad dul síos cúpla focal a rá mar gheall ar an mBille agus, go háirithe, ar an alt. San céad dul síos ní aontaím ar chor ar bith le alt 6. Measaim go bhfuil sé go nimhneach i n-aghaidh gach rud ar throid muintir na hÉireann ar a son leis na céadta bliain anuas agus nach ceart agus nach cóir dúinn agus nach bhfuil sé de cheart ag Aire nó Ministéir ar bith an cúmhacht íontach sin a thabhairt do aon duine nó do aon dream agus go mór mhór d'aon Rialtas lasmuigh den tír seo chun cead a thabhairt dóibh ár dtuairimí, ár gcultúr, ár gceol agus ár n-amhráin agus chuile rud a bhrú isteach orainn agus ar mhuintir na hÉireann, is cuma cén áit den tír seo ina bhfuil siad. Ar an ábhar sin, mar adeirim, tá mé go gránna ina choinne.
Senator Horgan spoke about the Minister's dilemma. I admit that I believe he is in a fix. He was sent in here by the Government with this red herring, or decoy, to take the people's minds away from the real issues facing this country at present — 103,000 people unemployed and the rising cost of living, the disastrous agricultural and cattle situation and various other economic ills. We are discussing this red herring here for three or four days to distract our minds from the real issues. Nevertheless, the Minister is using this recreation to put across to the best of his ability his own personal ideas, and backed up by the Government, regarding the whole spectrum of Irish life and the Irish nation.
It is a well-known fact that the Minister is doing everything he can possibly do, aided and abetted by the British Goverment, to complete the conquest of this country so far as the British nation is concerned.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
The Senator has been speaking for three minutes and has not yet come to section 6.
I am speaking on section 6.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
The Senator was when speaking in Irish.
Is féidir liom labhairt i nGaeilge má tá sin ag teastáil uait. I say these things with sincerity. I firmly believe that is the position and the actions of the Minister has led me to that belief, especially since the Government has taken office. We know the attitude of the Coalition Government to the Irish language. It ties in with this, because they already——
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
The Senator is persistently out of order. Please relate to section 6. This is not a Second Stage debate. We are on section 6.
With all due respect, I am trying to speak on section 6, and I am adverting to the fact that in that section we would be handing over to a foreign power complete control of our second channel.
They have it in Cavan.
I have not interrupted any of the other Senators.
They even have multi-channel television.
I will not be cross-examined by anybody here.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
Senator Dolan on the section and without interruption.
With all due respect I am as entitled to the protection of the Chair as any other Senator.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
I will give you the protection of the Chair.
If I am getting under the skin of any Senators they can speak afterwards. I intend to make my own contribution in my own rural and individual way. I do not want any prompts from anybody. I am trying to give the reasons why I think that this is a very bad section; why I think it is the most important section in this Bill and why I think it will do undue harm to the people of this country in the years ahead if it succeeds in going through here — and with the majority the Coalition Government enjoy in the Seanad, there will not be any trouble in putting it through this House, especially as many of their own Members are away in the south and will not be here to vote. When they take it to the other House they may have more difficulties there, but they are certainly sure of a majority here.
The Minister has already said that he has tested and got a feed-back of the opinion of many people who live in the single-channel areas. The method used to assess that would not be accepted as a very valid argument. He did knock on a few doors around Galway and naturally as he was the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs he probably paddled his own canoe and mentioned this, in the hope of securing extra votes.
They broached me on every occasion.
I cannot verify that but I will take the Minister's word for it. I can assure him that I was around in opposition, and the results proved, very successfully and emphatically, that not everybody agreed with the Minister. They did not favour his way of thinking in either of the by-elections in Galway. Consequently, I cannot lay much weight on his argument. He mentioned a Gallup poll taken by The Sunday Independent. I have not much experience of these Gallup polls or how they are conducted, but very often these people go to their own clients and probably anticipate their answers. I would not place too much faith on any of these methods of determining whether people were in favour or not. I am not against a second channel. I live in a multi-channel area.
As a Government we cannot provide in every corner of Ireland the facilities that people enjoy in another corner. In my county we cannot enjoy the benefits of university education, regional colleges of technology, industrial areas, railways and other amenities enjoyed in other parts of the country. It is ridiculous to make the argument that because we happen to be geographically situated in the province of Ulster where we can get BBC, the Minister and the Government should provide it in every other part of Ireland.
I have always been suspicious of Britain and her attitude towards this country. If people, and especially Irish Ministers and Irish Governments, take the word of British statesmen, they should be very wary. It is a fact of history and cannot be denied. Consequently, it is small wonder that many people all over Ireland are very suspicious of what the Minister is trying to do. It has been suggested that the British Government made this overture and are prepared to put in this second channel free, gratis and for nothing, in order to ensure that they will have access to every corner of this country.
They are very worried about us.
Yes, and they have been worried about us for quite a long time. The Minister and everybody knows that they have up to 50,000 of their forces stationed in our country. They were worried about us during the last war, and as far back as I can remember. If, as the Minister says, they are not concerned about us, they could go back to their own country, take care of themselves and leave us alone — a thing they have been asked to do on many occasions. They have never yet consented to do it.
The attitude seems to be that because this channel is coming from Britain it must be accepted. The Minister is only following a well-beaten track already made by the Coalition Government in jettisoning and throwing overboard many of the things the Irish people held dear through both the first and second Governments in this country who, to their credit, sponsored the preservation of our Irish identity, our Irish language, and so on. Now, after 50 years, when we were getting somewhere, the Coalition Government, for the sake of a few votes, threw all this overboard. There never was any demand for that service and the number of people who failed to obtain their leaving certificate because of failing in the Irish language was infinitesmal. The records bear that out. The attitude of this Government to Irish life seems to be to cut out anything of an Irish nature. They do not seem to want Seán Ó Riada; they do not want Irish songs; they do not want the Irish language. They seem to have come to the conclusion that the majority of the people in Ireland will back them on this. This is not so. The people will give a sound judgment on these matters.
It would be more important for us to try to find work for our people. One method of doing this would be to ensure that those already working in Telefís Éireann would be able to hold on to their own jobs. Without stretching the imagination too far, it can easily be seen that with the vast resources which the BBC have at their disposal, and the limited resources which we have, when they get a foothold in here with their second channel they will eventually take over Telefís Éireann.
Telefís Éireann was set up about ten years ago. We are very thankful to them and are proud of the work they have done since their inception. They put on excellent programmes. Even in the multi-channel areas, programmes such as The Riordans, can hold their own. It is an undeniable fact that when the BBC move in with their vast resources it will be the death knell for Radio Telefís Éireann. Many people will lose their jobs. We should be concerned about this.
We are an independent nation — at least in the Twenty-six Counties. I do not think any independent nation in the world, even in Africa, would dream of handing over to a foreign station the right to use their air channel to transmit their propaganda. BBC programmes are always interspersed with British propaganda. That is fundamentally what the British media has been set up to do. They and the Americans spend more money on putting across their way of life than any other nation in the world.
The amount of canned programmes imported into Britain and America is infinitesmal. They import very few programmes from France, Italy, Germany or elsewhere, but they certainly export their own. When they get a foothold in here, it will sound the death knell for Radio Telefís Éireann and for our Irish way of life.
The Government must already have taken a decision on this because so far as my information goes work is already going ahead for the second channel. In reply to something I said today the Minister more or less admitted——
I answered the Senator's point that we had already made preparations. On a point of clarity, the preparation would be required for any second channel, whether RTE 2 or rebroadcasting. RTE have urged me to get on with this.
I was going to suggest that the British Government had already been in touch with the Minister and had toured these sites in anticipation——
The British Government have never been in my house to the extent that the Senator supposes.
I am just giving the Minister the feedback he will get from his own people.
I apologise to the Senator.
We on this side of the House are in favour of a second channel, as I have said that on many occasions. It would be good for the country, but under the supervision of RTE. They could pick the best educational and entertainment programmes from outside television stations. I would not object if these programmes came from BBC 1, BBC 2 or UTV, provided they were good programmes. I am sure the Authority would be the best judges of that. I emphatically object to the fact that the Minister would be able to direct them and say they must rebroadcast BBC and nothing else. He tells us that from surveys he made that that is exactly what everybody wants.
An old saying says "Money makes the mare go", and because of the vast resources available to the British Broadcasting Corporation it means that eventually, despite what was set up ten years ago, we will end up by having no television or individuality of our own. I firmly believe we will not be able to provide against the mass media and the well-known British techniques of making sure that their philosophy and their way of life will swamp any individuality that has survived in us through the troubled dark ages through which this country has passed over the last 700 years. We may be accused of being over-sentimental but the poet has said:
Breathes there a man with soul so dead
Who never to himself has said
This is my own, my native land.
If we have not a reasonably good opinion of ourselves and of our country, and if our nation and our Government cannot stand firmly over our beliefs, let us never expect anybody outside to do it. Let us have some faith in our ability to provide a second channel, as we had faith in setting up the first RTE channel. Let us have faith in the ability of our personnel. We have ways and means of censoring them if we do not agree with them. We have no way of censoring what will be put across to us from a foreign station.
We are a young country that has entered the EEC. We are going abroad, not alone to England or America but into Europe which has different languages and cultures. Our people should be getting good educational programmes on continental languages. These, too, could be broadcast on an RTE second channel. It would be of benefit to future generations who would thank us for making it possible for them to grow up with a second or third language. We can never be good citizens abroad if we are not reasonably good citizens at home, and if we have not a certain amount of faith and pride in what Irishmen and women can do, not alone as workers in the industrial field, but as people who provide entertainment and educational facilities for us through RTE.
The Minister seems to think we have £5 million to spare—where he is getting that is a mystery to me and to the taxpayer.
The Minister never mentioned a figure of £5 million. That is a Senator's figure.
I accept the Minister's word that he has not mentioned £5 million, but it has been mentioned that there is a financial commitment involved. I cannot understand how the money has become so flush now. Of course, the taxpayer knows because several budgets have been imposed on us over the last couple of months. If there is any extra money available, it could be better used by providing a second channel under our own control, and any surplus could be used to give a better service to the people in Northern Ireland who cannot receive RTE or Radio Éireann, or to our own exiles living in Glasgow and England who cannot hear the All-Ireland Final, and the Irish music they would love to hear. It was the Coalition Government who scrapped the short wave station that would have made these things possible.
I am against this section. Let us remember that we are here to do something which is tremendously important. It may look like an exercise so far as the Minister and the Seanad are concerned. The Minister seems to be fully aware of what he is doing. If he carries this to its logical conclusion, as some Senators from the universities, for whom I have great respect, said we will send our children over to London to have them educated. We will get them into British universities. We will scrap everything Irish and every bit of individuality we have and, then we will be good British boys and girls.
I want to clear one or two points. I was very pleased to hear Senator Yeats' concern about the trade unions. He is not alone in this respect. The Labour Senators, arising out of their concern about the trade union position in RTE, were afforded an opportunity by the Minister to talk to him and have their fears allayed. After that meeting we were quite satisfied that not only had the Minister satisfied us on those points but he had gone a great deal of the way with the deputation from the National Union of Journalists. That is as I understand it. My own union has members in Telefís Éireann. The Minister met a deputation from my union on that matter. I got no feedback to say that any anxieties remained. I must assume that some degree of satisfaction resulted.
The Minister went down to the Irish Transport and General Workers Union Conference. My information is that he was quite well received. I can see now that the question of the fear about the trade union has been well and truly handled at many levels, by various bodies and deputations.
Does the Senator appreciate that Senator Mullen put down an amendment to delete section 6?
Senator Mullen is well able to take care of himself in the clinches.
That does not fit in with what you are saying.
The Minister was at Senator Mullen's conference in Wexford. No matter what Senator Yeats may say he will not split Senator Mullen and me. We are very close.
I am merely pointing it out to the Seanad. It is a fact. It is on the Order Paper, amendment No. 59, in case you are interested.
You have disturbed me now. I was rather pleased also to hear Senator Yeats say that since the setting up of the State a policy has been followed by the private enterprise system denying the right of workers to share in the control of the governing of their own industries. The community developed a separate attitude in both cases. The outcry for the demand for State socialism to some extent can be attributed to the fact that no initiative was taken over 50 years to see to this aspect.
On many occasions trade unionists could not even get information machinery going, not to talk of consultation machinery. It is a wonderful departure, and I am delighted that somebody who has been associated for many years with the political scene is becoming concerned about trade unionists.
I have always been interested.
Thanks for that. There was an assumption that everybody was sufficiently educated on the cultural side and so would have a strong leaning towards programmes that would have a great cultural content. My evidence does not lead to this. In multi-channel areas each family — I know of many families in the working-class areas I visit — have set their own value judgment on the programmes that they want to see. It would be my guess that they would not be in favour of cultural programmes.
This might not be something to boast about and I am not saying that the idea should not be cultivated. But, it is a fact of life that people of my age did not have the opportunity of this education to appreciate cultural programmes. Many other people in my age bracket had to leave school at 12 years of age and go out to work. This was the case with the majority and not just the minority of people. In effect, many people would not want culturally-inclined programmes. We cannot all leave our biases outside the door—I bring mine in here as well— but the problem is that when one is talking it is only natural to bring this type of bias into the matter.
The other point I should like to make arises out of multi-channel viewing. People in single-channel areas have got to know about the situation through the inter-changing and people going on holidays in the multi-channel areas and they have an awareness of the type of things that would suit their needs. As the Minister has said, they would like a total multi-channel situation, but they also can indulge in the game of making value judgments of the type of programmes they would like to see.
This Bill is giving off a ground swell of opinion and, like every other ground swell of opinion — the coming of community organisations, the demands to have participation in the intermediary structures of the Government and even the EEC for various organised groups and civil rights people — it is a natural thing and will not be held back. We must face up to that.
In the circumstances what do we do? The people must be given some sort of an alternative. All the evidence supports that. I take the point that Senator Yeats made about the 60 million people in Britain who have quite a lot of money to spend. In a country where some of the revenue must be got from a population of 3½ million people and the rest through advertising, there is a disadvantage if we talk about money against money. That is not a fair comparison.
There is another way of looking at it. People want to see a live transmission of programmes. RTE by their very nature have limited services of finance—we cannot keep imposing taxes every time we need a few bob. On the other hand, BBC have the money, the resources, to send people abroad, to pay the technicians to do live broadcasts. The people in this country like to see them and it is well within the capacity of BBC to do this. It is not within the capacity of Telefís Éireann to meet this kind of demand. This is not only a want but a right, just the same as it was a right to develop and grow into the community situation in the other ways I mentioned.
Senators on the other side spoke of the possibility of people becoming indoctrinated by BBC 1. Listening to Senator Dolan's speech I can say that nobody will indoctrinate him, and he has multi-channel viewing. So that argument will not stand up. He will not be changed and there are quite a lot of people like him—more luck to them. They are not going to be changed.
I do not have a lot of opportunities to watch television. I cannot walk into my house and tell my family to turn off "Cannon", that I want to see a debate. That is their value judgment. "Cannon" is their programme, or "Kojak" or something of that nature, and not "Midweek", which I like to watch. I also like "Seven Days" but I do not have the opportunity. It would be unfair of me to come in, when I am not there all the time, and take over the house. It would be very selfish because I follow other pursuits.
They are the things that are there in the multi-channel viewing area. The full demands cannot be met and it is quite right for the Minister to say that he is going as near as possible to it. This is the only way to do it. We must bear in mind that he has given RTE the opportunity to put to the country their proposals for RTE 2. He has not closed the books on that one yet. I say that with due respect to the points of view in favour of a second RTE channel and in view of the fact that the Minister has not acted dogmatically in this respect— the challenge is still there.
Senator Yeats said that now we were in the EEC we should be outgoing and try to develop a broader concept of life and know what is going on. At the same time he made the national argument. If you want to be outward looking you cannot cling to the narrow concept of nationalism in the sense of television viewing. If we want to develop this broader concept it seems crazy to think that RTE with their limited capacity can deliver the goods in this respect. They cannot. The people who can deliver are the BBC with their great facilities and so on.
Those are the points in support of the section. The case has not been made that the section should be deleted. Half of the country has multi-channel viewing television. The cable installation was competed for by RTE against Marlin Communal Aerials and other private enterprise firms. As a result there was no downgrading of jobs in RTE. If there was, I am sure it would have been stopped fairly quickly. There has not been a decrease in RTE jobs since the multi-channel viewing developed. On the contrary, there has been a slight increase. I cannot account for it.
I share the view of Senator Horgan that when we talk about people working in television we are not speaking about supervision and so on as in normal industry — there is a danger that the job content might be affected.
I am concerned about that, and whatever is possible should be looked at to see that there is no danger of RTE job losses as a result of this section. I do not think there will be. There is an upsurge of opinion, not only in Telefís Éireann but elsewhere, for more worker participation. While you cannot have the same opportunities in Telefís Éireann as you can in industry on the question of decision-making and so on, you can have a type of involvement that would circumvent the effects of anything that might tend towards a diminution of the value of the job. I would be concerned about that. With the way Telefís Éireann is structured, the type of trade union representations they have and so on — Senator Horgan is one of the best advocates of this — the question of job diminution is in fairly safe hands.
Before I embark on the main matter of my speech, I should like to give the Minister notice that it would be a very good thing if tomorrow—the debate on this section will continue until tomorrow — before any decision is reached we could get some kind of costings: roughly what it would cost to get the BBC channel rebroadcast. There is an incredible variety of things involved in that, right down to the fact that actors have to be paid the royalties. I know of an actor who got something like 45½p from the national broadcasting station of Israel because he had played a minor part in a play in London which had been bought by Israel, who have notoriously the lowest rates of royalties in the world.
That opens up an enormous avenue in the whole area of royalties. The costing of BBC transmission coming in here is something we should have in front of us. The other thing that we should have in front of us, if we are to be persuaded of the justice of the Minister's case, is what, roughly, would it cost for us to have the alternative, RTE 2. Fr. Joe Dunne in a couple of brilliant and suggestive articles in the Irish Times, suggested that the cost of this would be much less. It would simply involve video tape recording equipment, a team of highly skilled recorders and a team of experienced selectors and, of course, a transmission unit which could send out that selected body of material.
Before we decide on this, as a responsible body of legislators we would need costings. Therefore, I suggest to the Minister, with as much humility as I can summon in circumstances like this, that it would be very useful to us if we could know what we are voting for and what we are voting against in terms of solid money, because the taxpayer and the licence payer will have to foot the bill. That brings me very adroitly to the next area of discussion.
One of the arguments that has been urged ad infinitum in the course of this debate is that the purpose of the legislation is to remedy the defect and the loss which the people outside the multi-channel area are suffering from not being able to see anything except RTE. This has been urged so frequently that it has taken on a certain kind of moral force. I should like to recall Senators' attention to the reality of the case. No matter which station we adopt, the people who will pay for it are all the people inside and outside the multi-viewing areas. Whatever fee is levied, all of us are concerned. If the present services ethic is to be allowed to run, it is a question of pleasing as many people as possible, and the people within the multi-channel area have as much right to be pleased for the cost of their licence as the people outside it.
I would remind the Minister that in this circumstance the people within the multi-channel viewing area constitute roughly half the people who will be footing this bill. The argument that the people outside the multi-channel area are the ones to be pleased is a false one, for two reasons. Firstly, the raison d'être of this, the Minister would argue, is because certain people have not access to multi-channel viewing. If we have access to multi-channel viewing, it has nothing whatever to do with this state. It is because of the fact that it is a pure accident of geography that these channels from a neighbouring island happen to be picked up in certain parts of our island.
One could argue that this is televisual contraband we are receiving— we are not paying anything for it; we are getting it from the BBC without leave. If it were to happen in the morning, for instance, that the east coast of Ireland had a sudden upsurge of access to pornography, would it be necessary for the Government to see that this advantage was to be spread westwards in order to make sure that the democratic writ would run all over the country?
The principle of that is highly dubious. The fact is that what we have been getting is something that we have not been paying for up to now. It is an accident of geography and it is something that no Government are responsible for, unless the Government chose to charge for it, and I would hope nobody would ever do that.
Legalisation of cable was a deliberate choice which extended multi-channel television in the east and north. It is not relevant to geography. It was a choice.
BBC was available before that happened.
Not to the extent it is now.
I was born in Leitrim and I was having BBC television at the age of 14 years. The second point I want to make in this connection is that the fact that the people in the multi-channel area have seen all the programmes does that disable them from having a better view of what is best. Surely it is an advantage — surely, the fact that they have had the opportunity of seeing the whole range of programmes available on the neighbouring island puts them in a better position to make a judgment than the people without that.
I would not claim to reverse the argument that we should do it only to please the people in the west. I would argue that the people in the multi-channel area are first of all going to pay as much for it as the others and secondly, that they are at least as qualified to decide what they want to pay for. I have dwelt on that point with a certain force because the general feeling here today was that we are legislating merely for the people outside the multi-channel area. We are legislating for all the people who will have to foot the bill.
A third point is the attempt to reverse the trend that has grown up in the rhetoric of the debate. From the other side of the House there has been the charge that people who are opposed to this want to protect the people in the west from foreign corrupting influences, that they want to censor the national mind and purge it of the more dangerous infusions that might be imported from Britain. That certainly is not where I would put my emphasis and it is where I would never hope to put my emphasis. What I would like to argue is that the bringing in of BBC to the exclusion of everything else is the refusal of an enormous and exciting challenge.
We have primarily the opportunity to create a second television station. In doing that we can choose to hand it all over to Britain or we can try to do it ourselves. I would argue that we decide to do it ourselves. I am not thinking as a Dublin person. I am from Leitrim and most of the people in Telefís Éireann are, in fact, country people. That dichotomy which is being argued all the time is a fault. I repudiate it. We would have the opportunity of doing something new and exciting and no country in the world has such an opportunity as we have. ITV and BBC as two broadcasting corporations are probably the greatest in the world and they provide a tremendous range of vivid and beautiful material but no one of their channels has a monopoly of the best. Of all the channels, I would say that BBC have perhaps a monopoly of the worst. I will demonstrate that in a moment because I have got the Radio Times in front of me.
What I am saying is something akin to what Senator Quinlan said earlier today. In creating a second channel we must think with a larger tenderness of the people outside the multi-channel area. If one bends one's mind to that and thinks of rural Ireland on a Sunday, there is Croke Park and Dalymount. There are lots of people who would like to see all of one or all of the other. As it happens at the moment there is a rather bitty cutting back and forth between them. Nobody is really satisfied. This element of sport is a very important thing in the Anglo-Saxon world but particularly in Ireland. In particular GAA, hurling and then soccer. It is very vivid and important and it should be catered for.
I presume that the people watching are themselves not playing either Gaelic games or soccer.
I would argue that the people who are watching certainly are not playing. I would agree with that. However, having got that semantic difficulty out of the way, I would like to look at what BBC 1 offer on Sundays. Remember that if we had an opportunity of an alternative station Dalymount Park could go on exactly the same time as Croke Park. The man who wanted Dalymount Park could have it and the man who wanted Croke Park could have it.
What is happening on BBC 1 on Sundays? I will tell you what is happening. There is a film matinee at 2.10 and is called "The Old Maid", a season of films starring the screen's first lady, Bette Davis. That is something that RTE has already shown and they can buy at the drop of a hat, indeed at the drop of a half-crown, any day of the week. At 3.40 there is a programme called — this is after "The Old Maid", when you have supped the splendours of that —"The Countrymen". It is about tourists seeking escape from the industrial North-East of Britain. Then at 4.10 there is "Top of the Form" in which a place called Gower goes into battle against a place called Abergavenney. It has to do with questions, and seeing if these people can answer them. At 4.35 there is a programme called "Goofy". It is the type of programme that RTE can buy for an old halfpenny piece.
If the halfpenny is British you are all right.
Of course. At 4.45, guess what programme is on? "Alias Smith and Jones". No one has ever heard of that. Indeed they have been tracking their way across our screens for the past five years. Fair enough, what is our alternative channel? Is it necessary to repeat it? There is a programme called "Mr. Ben" at 1.55. After seeing all these programmes you will be so hooked at that stage that you will insist on seeing "Pollyanna" at 5.35.
Tell us what RTE have.
They have some game from Croke Park.
I would ask the Senator to read out what programme RTE have.
This is a BBC publication and we do not loom as large in the minds of the English public as the Senator seems to suggest.
A Senator
Hear, hear.
I will send you the Sunday Independent.
I take the Sunday Independent. It is quite a common thing on Sunday, unless I am greatly mistaken, to have recorded matches from Croke Park and Dalymount Park in the afternoon. Are people suggesting that this does not happen?
(Interruptions.)
The debate will be on tomorrow morning. I would love to see this massive evidence that we do not have broadcasts from Croke Park and outside. However, if you look at this publication, across the page at BBC 2, which seems to have attracted a certain amount of attention even from the jaded eyes of Senators at this stage of a long debate, you will see an extraordinarily vivid array of things that are really worth seeing. I will not go through them bit by bit, but almost every week there is a good production of classical English drama. There are extremely fine renditions of classical European and world music. There are ballet and literary programmes. There are discussions of considerable force and interest. There are, along with that a whole series which we have bought, like "The Pallisers", "Upstairs Downstairs", "The Forsyth Saga" and so on. There are very good things available but I am sorry to say they are not available on Sunday afternoons on BBC 1. What I am suggesting is that we should make our selection of these and create a great second channel. This is an enormous opportunity which we are throwing on the rubbish heap.
Most Senators may think I have taken a selective plunge into BBC 1 programmes. If you take a look at the programmes on BBC 1 on Saturday, 31st May, at 5.55 there is a programme called "Jim 'ill Fix It" with Jimmy Saville. I know a lot of people like to listen to Jimmy Saville. I have nothing against him at all. At 6.30 there is Saturday night at the movies, a film called "Kissin' Cousins" with Elvis Presley. At 8 p.m. there is the "Black and White Minstrel Show", a show which has totally exhausted the Irish audience because it was imported about three years ago and had an extremely long run. It is good but is it new? It is really "old hat" to the RTE viewer. At 8.50 there is a referendum campaign broadcast.
That would make your night.
That is the British referendum.
(Interruptions.)
The Government have brought in the Bill this week and this is fair comment because it is this week that this Bill——
You could switch to RTE 1.
You will inevitably do that if the Minister has his way. I think that the clash of knobs throughout the country switching to RTE 1 will be quite ear-splitting. At 9.00 on that Saturday evening, guess what, "Cannon"? No one ever heard of "Cannon". Of course the fact is that he has been boring hell out of every parent in the country for about two or three years. Then you have news. Let us face it, you have got all kinds of very ordinary humdrum stuff, nothing good, bad or indifferent about it. There is hardly a damn thing in the whole lot that an Irish RTE viewer has not seen and is not sick of. The provision of this as an alternative service is a bit of a joke. It is not an alternative service. It is a carbon copy, large and not particularly more legible.
A carbon copy of what?
Of RTE. I am saying that the things I have mentioned are to be seen on RTE.
And that is bad?
Progress reported; Committee to sit again.
The Seanad adjourned at 10 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Friday, 6th June, 1975.