I am hoping in the context of the Second Stage debate to articulate those views. I will be coming to that point, but I think that what has happened in this debate is gross distortion of the issues. I am saddened that this Bill has not been acted upon by responsible commentators in this House and in the other House to initiate a reasoned, rational and serious debate on the status and future role of broadcasting and RTE.
To return to the point I was making; the working group within Equity came back with a recommendation to the major union that they were in favour of an alternative; the reason was that they wanted to protect their members' interests, which is what a good trade union should be about. The National Union of Journalists were also in favour of an alternative broadcasting regime because they saw it as protecting the long-term interests of their members. I would like to remind the House that until alternative legal broadcasting was initiated, if you did not broadcast with RTE you did not broadcast, and if you did not accept the salaries, fees and terms and conditions of employment that RTE gave you as a broadcaster, you did not work.
I was always in favour of an alternative for purely selfish reasons — nothing to do with any altruistic, high minded notions I might have had about where broadcasting should or should not be. It was my pocket, and that of my colleagues in broadcasting, which were being affected. It is in that context that I am explaining to my distinguished colleague on the other side of the House that I am not a member of the RTE staff; I am on a short-term contract.
It is also important that RTE's contribution to the national life should be put on the record. When we think of broadcasters such as Michael O'Hehir, we realise that it is the easiest thing in the world for any Member to stand up and praise RTE not only in terms of their wonderful programming but of their personnel. I might remark in passing that Michael O'Hehir is a sad loss to sports broadcasting. I am glad to hear his health is improving.
It is not good enough to single out RTE's contribution and to make banal remarks. I am proud of my association with RTE as a national broadcasting service. I am proud of what RTE as a national broadcasting service have contributed to the life of this country, since 1927. RTE hold a unique position in Irish life. The only other station which compares with RTE is the BBC in Britain. The integrity and credibility of their news and current affairs programmes and other programmes has been unquestioned for generations. We are privileged to have had, and hopefully will continue to have, a national service such as that provided by RTE, both radio and television. The concept of public broadcasting was laid down by the first Director General of the BBC, Lord Reith, and it has been the bible, the unofficial philosophy, so to speak, of broadcasters ever since. Lord Reith said that the concept of public broadcasting meant that broadcasters were to inform, educate and entertain, which is what RTE have done in abundance for generations.
I have been critical of certain aspects of RTE's public broadcasting policy. I have sometimes felt — this view is shared by many people — that some broadcasters, or to be more accurate, the managers in RTE who decide programme policy, have been concerned to such an extraordinary degree with informing and educating the public that they have failed to entertain the public. The emergence and development of the pirate radio sector was a direct result of the failure by RTE to realise that they were living in changing times during the late seventies and early eighties. However, it is to their credit that within a few years they realised that the politicians in this and the other House were not reflecting the views of the people on the street when they complimented them each year on their programming quality. The reality was that an increasing number of people were turning away from RTE and were listening to their local, albeit amateurish, broadcasting stations.
In 1987, following years of inactivity, for ideological reasons, by the then Coalition Government — in fairness to Fine Gael, I am sure that if they had been in Government on their own they would have introduced proposals in this regard — when nothing was done about broadcasting, it became the laughing stock of Europe that illegal broadcasting operated in Ireland. It is to the Minister's credit that within a short time of taking office in 1987 he not only had initiated proposals but had implemented them in the shortest possible time so that today we have in place an alternative national and local broadcasting structure.
I am not for one minute going to dance on RTE's grave. Indeed, referring to my personal selfish interest, I have no wish to broadcast with any other organisation. As I said earlier, I am proud of my association with RTE and I hope it will continue. It must be acknowledged that the advent of alternative services at local and national level — I will refer later to the national service — has shown that when a professional and competent service is put in place, with the help of local advertisers, local radio is a viable entity. The one major objection to the 1988 Bill was the Minister's proposal to oblige local and national contractors to devote 20 per cent of their programming time exclusively to news and current affairs. While I did not object to this proposal I felt the Minister was being somewhat ambitious in his aspirations in that area because of the obvious difficulties involved in securing start-up finance and getting organised. I do not think the Minister has had any criticism from local radio stations about this 20 per cent requirement, and I am sure he will happy to confirm this in his reply. I doubt if he has received letters from local contractors asking him to reduce the 20 per cent requirement.
We Irish have always been good at talking to ourselves, which is what local radio is all about. It is about people in a locality talking about themselves, their neighbours, their region and their friends. The success of the local stations over the last 18 months is proof of this. It is to the credit of the Minister and the Government that they grasped that nettle in 1987-88 and put in place a service of which we can be proud. Of course, there are going to be difficulties and some of the 16 local radio stations may not be able to survive in their present form. They are, after all, free marketeers and have to go out into the marketplace and compete. Some may not survive but I do not think that local broadcasting will be in any real danger.
I have dealt to some extent with the monopoly position of RTE. It is important to put on the record that RTE — maybe not at management or executive level but certainly at the lower level — did themselves enormous damage in the way they attacked the Minister for Communications in the early stages of this debate. I accept that when people genuinely believe their jobs are threatened they can become very emotional and it would be wrong of me not to inform the Minister in this House of the discussions I have had, wearing my broadcasting hat, with the employees of RTE, There is low morale and even a feeling of anger and apathy among some broadcasters who believe that the incentive to succeed will be taken away specifically by the capping of advertising which will in effect reduce RTE's potential to earn as much money as the marketplace dictates. It is in this climate that many of the 2,000 people working in RTE are responding to this Bill. There is a difference between personal abuse and a reasoned debate and logical proposals for an alternative. I believe some people within RTE were perceived as abusing their monopoly position by going on air and expressing not only political opinions but abusing the Minister's integrity and his person. However, I believe reason has prevailed and in this context I would draw the Minister's attention to a submission which I received from the Radio Telefís Éireann Managers' Association and their Honorary Secretary, Mr. Tony Fahy. That submission states, and I quote:
The RTEMA is very deeply concerned about the negative effects the Bill will have on all RTE's operations by considerably weakening its ability to survive and perform as a professional public service broadcasting organisation.
Having said that, however, the association welcomes the amendments introduced by the Minister for Communications in Dáil Éireann on Friday, 29 June. The increase in the minutage allowance for advertising from four and a half to five minutes per hour will provide a small measure of relief and the linking of the licence fee base to inflation will provide further limited scope for RTE revenue from the second year onwards.
They went on:
With a view to affording some further relief to RTE in the very difficult years ahead and also giving some flexibility to the Government in enabling it to keep in touch with the developing situation in a run up to the launch of TV3 we ask that consideration be given to other proposals in the Bill.
The Minister has already indicated that he is not prepared to accept any further amendments, suffice for me to say that the proposals by the managers' association concerned changes in the advertising capping. There is also a proposal that the current 100 per cent rigid link in relation to advertising revenue to the licence fee should be expressed in a higher range and, finally, that these vital parts of the section dealing with RTE's minutage and revenue cap be implemented at a date to be set by the Minister. I am pleased the Minister has already indicated that he will not be implementing these proposals until 1 October at the earliest.
It is important to point out to the House, when we talk about advertising capping, that this is not without precedent or unique, or a proposal the Minister plucked from the air. There is a European standard. A State or private body not just in the Community but in the Council of Europe, cannot exceed a certain amount of advertising time per hour. The European standard permitted under the EC Broadcasting Directive and the Council of Europe Convention is nine minutes per hour. RTE, are currently allowed six minutes per hour while UTV are allowed seven minutes per hour. The trend within Europe is to curtail advertising even further or to shuttle it into specific periods of the hour, the main reason being that Europeans generally are concerned about what they see as a reduction in programme quality and a huge increase in the influence of multinational advertisers. It is important that contributors to this debate should realise that there is already in existence a capping mechanism within Europe for television and radio.
I suggest to the Minister in the context of capping, and the argument put forward by RTE, that their potential to generate more income has been severely curtailed, that he might listen to proposals for the further utilisation of existing resources within RTE with no extra cost to the Exchequer and within the budget of RTE. This point was made by the RTE trade union group in a submission in which they said that one of their major objections to the establishment of an alternative broadcasting service was that they knew of the existence of a vast resource, including a network of linked studios nationwide and skilled staff to work them, which was paid for by the people through the RTE Authority but which was to a certain extent under-utilised. We are all aware that there are studios in parts of the country where RTE have not initiated or originated programmes. It has been a source of great annoyance to people living down the country that when one tunes in to Ulster Television, particularly in my part of the country, they traditionally not only have the national news at tea time but a very extensive magazine-current affairs features programme which is transmitted for almost an hour and reflects life in that part of the island. If there is a criticism of RTE in a public service context it is that there has been over the past ten to 15 years a tendency to reflect increasingly what is happening in Dublin and on the east coast rather than in, for example, the west, north-west or the regions generally.
As the Bible says, they, RTE, should look at the mote in their own eye in this respect. I am talking here more about television than radio. Radio has always had a very proud tradition of taking news items at regional level from their substantial number of "stringers" around the country — local correspondents. My late father was a local correspondent for RTE and the national newspapers so I grew up in that environment and, therefore, have some knowledge of the reaction of RTE to news stories sent in from my part of the country. My knowledge also came from talking to other correspondents. The Minister has not been inclined, since this debate started — I am talking about 1988 rather than the most recent one — to allow RTE extend their range of services in the broadcasting area simply because he has been concerned about setting up an alternative broadcasting regime. I can understand his feeling on this matter but I am thinking about the medium to long term. The studios, personnel and expertise are there and the RTE group of unions have a valid point in relation to more development of the regional services despite the fact that we have a local radio and that we will have an alternative national television channel.
The potential that RTE have to earn extra revenue in relation to the capping of their advertising has been probably the most critical and most criticised part of this legislation. It is important to put on the record of the House that while RTE are restricted as a result of the reduction in advertising time per hour, they are not restricted in developing their other important services. Indeed, within the last few months, and prior to any inkling of the Minister's thinking on this, RTE restructured their commercial activities and set up a separate RTE commercial subsidiary to market RTE programmes and to capitalise and exploit the programming expertise and talent within the station. This was to be expected. I am surprised that RTE did not rationalise that area of their activities some years ago and take a lead from other broadcasting organisations around the world, specifically the BBC.
BBC television enterprises, and ITV television enterprisees, earn millions of pounds worldwide for their respective companies through the sale, not only of programmes but of radio cassettes, audio cassettes, recordings on record, classical recordings and commercial pop recordings. There are endless opportunities for the exploitation of this vital national resource. We have not heard anything in the argument to date on this Bill about that aspect of RTE's activities in any of the submissions I received. It is important for the Minister to amplify this argument in his reply at the end of Second Stage. I know that the response might be that there is a possibility of losing £12 million of revenue; these figures come from RTE and are based on their expected advertising income over a specific period of time. It would strengthen the argument to say that surely RTE cannot be expected to generate £12 million in extra curricular activities.
Great oaks from little acorns grow and we are now living in an inprecedented television age. Television has a voracious appetite. A statement from our friends in the Association of Advertisers in Ireland Ltd. said that in addition to RTE channels, RTE 1 and Network 2, there are ten other channels available to many Irish homes and it is expected that this number will double over the next few years.
Where, I ask, are the programmes to come from? They have got to come from professional programme makers, the RTE are in a very special position here. To refer to the RTE group of unions again, they have the resources, the personnel, the expertise. It is to the credit of sporting organisations in this country, the FAI, and more recently the GAA, that they are already beginning to see the potential for their games, on an international level and the GAA are beginning to negotiate substantial contracts with TV contractors for the transmission of their games all over the world. Anybody who would suggest that Irish programming is not acceptable in other parts of the world and, therefore, that there would be no potential for RTE to generate more income should telephone the General Secretary of the GAA and he will tell them how to sell their programmes.
The Minister refers to a code of practice relating to advertising, in other words section 4. He has not clarified as yet how he plans to go about this. One can glean from the comments he has been making that he is not at all satisfied with the existing code of practice as exercised by RTE. In a recent speech he drew attention to what he felt was the excess of TV time given to An Bord Gáis who sponsored the World Cup transmissions from RTE. Senator Neville referred to the wonderful job RTE have done and I endorse that. It was a tremendous technological and professional achievement. In these islands they covered far more football games than either BBC or ITV, yet we are always being told they have very limited resources. They managed not only to achieve a high level of excellence but exceeded that of two stations which we are told — and which we know — have far greater resources. Obviously, the input of An Bord Gáis was a considerable help to RTE in achieving this standard of excellence. In that context I hope the Minister's code of practice will not go too far in restricting RTE's ability to attract commercial and corporate sponsorship, and not only RTE because this Bill obviously applies to the new TV channel, TV3, that is coming onstream. It is my considered opinion that one of the main sources of programming finance for TV3 and for RTE increasingly in the coming years will be the corporate sector.
There must be guidelines. There are guidelines operating among our European partners and I hope the Minister will not take on board some of the restrictions which are currently in operation in some member states of the EC. For example, in Holland in music programmes the manufacturer of the electronic equipment and drum kits has their name blotted out by tape. I hope the Minister will not go to that extreme. It is obvious from the wording of the Bill that for the moment he is allowing RTE to continue applying the codes that are currently in force governing standards, practice and prohibitions in broadcast advertising. That is at the level of the multinational corporate advertisers. I suggest to the Minister that any severe restriction in this area could have a detrimental effect on the small entrepreneur. I am thinking of my colleague Senator Cassidy and others in the entertainment industry who have struggled for the past number of years to convince the powers that be in RTE that they should associate themselves with national and international music promotion, that by identifying with them would help them to attract more listeners and, obviously, more advertising.
I would not like to see inhibiting legislation that would mean RTE would turn around and say to the small-time entrepreneurs "I am sorry, the Minister says we can no longer be identified with you, therefore you are going to have to fund the promotional budget for these events yourself". That would be detrimental. This is a new phenomenon. It is creating employment. There are a number of Irish people who have offices and organisations in this country who are creating employment, albeit on a small level, and more importantly supporting the Irish music industry. RTE are to be complimented on aligning themselves with these interests in the past two or three years. I raise it in passing and hope that when the Minister comes to dealing specifically with the code of practice he will keep that in mind and not unduly restrict RTE. Of course, there must be restrictions but not undue restrictions.
I am very pleased the Minister has initiated changes regarding complaints to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission about broadcasts affecting an individual. For some considerable time, especially in the past ten years, many citizens have felt humiliated, degraded and verbally abused, if one can use that wide range of expressions, by individuals in the media generally. I am careful not to select RTE here. Their attitude in this area wherever there has been a wrongdoing has been exemplary, but generally people offended by the media have had little redress. An example is a statement made in a broadcast on radio or TV which is transmitted at peak time and is plainly inaccurate or causes distress to a citizen. The citizen goes through the Broadcasting Complaints Commission procedure and if their case has been listened to and they are vindicated, all that happens by way of redress is a couple of paragraphs in the RTE Guide, or possibly a sentence or two at some point during the day on radio or TV. That is not acceptable.
In fairness to RTE, I do not think they will raise any major objections to the improvements to this legislation. Let me reiterate, I believe RTE's role as a corporate body has been exemplary. One could argue that individuals in RTE in current affairs and news programmes have on occasion given the impression that politicians and more vulnerable members of society are fair game. I mention politicians in that context because they are vulnerable. However, generally they are able to look after themselves and it is more the private citizen I am concerned about here.
It is interesting that the RTE group of unions in their submission in relation to the broadcasting debate acknowledge there has been a problem in this area. They referred to the image of RTE and said that in dealing with politicians it is important to recognise and admit that RTE have an image problem. Some commentators portray them as a powerful, resourceful organisation using public moneys to compete unfairly with the other media. Some politicians see them as a collection of malcontents availing of every opportunity to make them, the politicians, look bad. Many see RTE as inefficient, with too many staff being paid too much to make a big deal out of a relatively simple job and opposing changes at all cost. The group go on to say that among audiences they are well received, with surveys showing a high level of audience satisfaction. They still produce and show the most popular radio and TV programmes in the country, but they admit that RTE had, and have, an image problem. I hope the strengthening of this section will go some way towards creating a climate where those citizens who feel RTE or the broadcasting contractors in general have maligned them will now get proper redress. I welcome this section of the Bill and I compliment the Minister on including it in the legislation.
I have a note here about Ciarán Mac Mathúna, one of our most esteemed professional broadcasters. Senator Neville referred to him as supporting his argument in favour of not making changes as set out in this Bill. I assume Senator Neville was referring to comments Mr. Mac Mathúna made on his recent conferring for which I take this opportunity to congratulate him. He is the elder statesman of Irish broadcasting and one of nature's gentlemen. Senator Neville may not be aware that some 12 months ago, RTE attempted to reduce the programmes presented by Ciarán Mac Mathúna and but for statements made in this House and the intervention of the Minister's Department, Mr. Mac Mathúna might no longer be broadcasting for RTE. That is just by way of correcting the record.
Finally, I ask the Miniser at some stage, to look at Atlantic 252 and say what he will do with it.