I was ten years of age at the time, and the answer to the Senator's question is yes.
There are some newspapers which we do not like. For example, there are some Sunday newspapers I will not buy because I do not like to get annoyed on a Sunday; I have better things to do with my Sunday than paying £1 to be annoyed. It is a right which I, as a consumer, have and to buy or not to buy a newspaper is one of the most fundamental rights we all have. Nobody is forcing us to buy newspapers. However, I believe we all value the richness, diversity and excitement which comes with our newspapers, including the variety of comment and also — we should not be too pompous about this — the sports coverage, the crosswords and the other parts that make up a newspaper. There is a danger of thinking of newspapers solely in terms of politics, of ourselves, but there are a variety of other aspects to newspapers which commend them to people.
When speaking of diversity I am referring to diversity of ownership, and this brings me to the nub of why we are here this evening, the immediate problem in the Irish Press Group. We have before us the report of the Competition Authority. The Minister can do a number of things. He can accept the report of the authority in full, as he has been urged to do by a number of people, especially Deputy O'Malley. However, speaking not as an expert, the immediate consequence of the implementation of the report — which would mean that the Irish Independent would have to withdraw from the Irish Press completely and the loan would have to be repaid — would be the end of the Irish Press as we know it. The 600 jobs will be gone and the three titles may not survive.
The Irish Press will be dead within weeks if the report of the Competition Authority is strictly implemented. The Irish Independent has put the Irish Press on a life sustaining machine. We do not have to look for motives — they are probably good and are made out of self-interest — but without the injection of money from the Irish Independent, the Irish Press would be dead in the water today. There is no point fooling ourselves about this: it is an important fact in this debate and if the plug is pulled there will be little hope for the Irish Press as we know it. If this happens, what follows?
There are three possibilities. First, nothing happens. If the Irish Independent is forced to pull out, the Irish Press dies. The view could be taken by hard headed accountants that there is no future, financial or commercial, for the titles of Irish Press Limited and they have no niche and no position. This, sadly, is a possibility and it is one which faces any business which goes to the wall. Let us not fool ourselves that it is not a very real possibility in the present debate.
The second possibility is that some local consortium will try to take over the titles cheaply and restart the Irish Press or, more likely, organisations headed by Mr. Rupert Murdoch or Mr. Conrad Black will move in and buy up the existing titles. Either way, the Irish Press as we know it is gone. Under a native consortium or one headed by the Murdoch/Black people, the title will be bought cheaply, the staff will be hand picked, most of them will probably be let go and most of the remainder will be on contract. It is also likely, although not necessary, that standards will drop. In the case of Murdoch and Black, their track record is not great in this respect. Neither lives here, neither cares anything about this country and each of them sees it simply as a top up to the circulation of their British newspapers. I do not see any great commitment, but I could be proved wrong; they could give us papers of the highest quality.
However, the knock on effects of that on our existing newspapers will be huge. I cannot spell them out but I am told by people in the industry that the effect on the three existing major national newspaper groups will be huge and they may find themselves, largely because of economies of scale, competing with multi-conglomerates, whereas they are small operations in a small country with all the advantages of lack of critical mass. They may well find themselves greatly reduced in quantity, quality, staff and so on in order to compete at the same level and at the same price as other papers.
The third possibility has been discussed in the industry. It is one with which Independent Newspapers Limited would certainly run and to which — and I am speaking from what I hear —The Irish Times would not be opposed. It is that a consortium of Irish newspaper groups, all with a share of under 25 per cent, would take over the Irish Press, give it breathing space, appoint a new management and allow the operation to be restructured. They would do this to protect their own interests, and to see if the Irish Press, under different management and restructured, could survive. The group could perhaps establish a trust under a very distinguished person who would guarantee its integrity and independence.
I want to make one further point about the issue raised by The Irish Times and knocked by the Sunday Independent. We need some overall national consideration of the newspaper/media industry. The Irish Times raised this issue on Saturday and Monday. The Sunday Independent knocked it on Sunday. On the basis of the argument so far, I would put the Sunday Independent high on rhetoric, not great on reason and The Irish Times dull, but perhaps more reasonable. However, I am not correcting essays. The basic issue is that there may be a need for a national media policy. National policy does not mean Government or State control. National policy means that there should be a clear public policy on certain key issues. We have stumbled into a situation where there are a range of issues about the media world which need to be dealt with. Some of them are being tackled in a piecemeal way. There is the question of defamation. That needs to be tackled, not once and for all, but the laws need to be modernised. Clear definitions must be established in that area.
There is the question of the principle of diversity. Perhaps a public definition is needed of what is meant by diversity of ownership, principles to which we can all subscribe and which make it clear commercially what people can or cannot do. There is the question of standards. It is extraordinary that people who are forever urging standards on us, standards of openness, accountability etc., themselves live in a world which is largely self-regulated. There is no authority, apart from the laws of libel, to which we can go if we feel that we have been wrongly treated by a newspaper, other than recourse to the courts. There is the question of subvention and the role of the State, which was mentioned by other speakers. A number of calls were made by trade union leaders in particular that the State should get involved. I would not like to move in that direction, but the State does subvent a paper at the present time. Anois is perhaps one of the most heavily subsidised papers in the western world because we believe the Irish language should have an outlet through the media. There may be circumstances in which properly determined public policy will dictate that certain subvention or changes in VAT regimes etc. are possible.
Finally, there is the question of whether or not we want certain principles of national ownership. Whatever the outcome of the present issue the Minister must face — I wish him well in that — there is a strong case to be made for some form of commission to consider the state of the industry in Ireland, to lay down principles which we, as democrats, can agree upon and to ensure that problems are resolved in a reasonably orderly fashion.