I move:
That Seanad Éireann calls on the Government to ensure the maximum equality of access to viewers throughout Ireland for television programming. In pursuance of this, Seanad Éireann also requests the Government to take appropriate action to ensure that exclusive rights to major Irish sporting events are not exercised by broadcasters in such a way as to deprive any sizeable proportion of the Irish public of the possibility of viewing such events live on television; and also that the Government develop a just and coherent response to the situation currently obtaining regarding MMDS relay television transmission.
When I realised that the Independent Group's Private Members' time had come up once more I was undecided between a number of different areas of interest. I have already on several occasions raised the question of the Luas and the need to ensure that provision is made for the central section of this system to be placed underground in the city of Dublin. There was also the question of the licensing laws and their application, especially in this city. However, the Leader of the House, Senator Manning, has graciously indicated that it is his intention to take these two items in the form of a special debate.
This leaves me free to select another subject which I consider of equal importance, although on first glance it may appear that I am uncharacteristically paying court to the popular imagination. This is the question of the need for the Government to guarantee access to television entertainment, especially sports broadcasts, to all citizens on an equal basis. A subsidiary but related matter is the question of the conflict between local communities, especially in the west, who have employed deflectors to relay the signals of British state and commercial television stations in areas where these signals are not normally received on the one hand and the commercial owners of MMDS licences on the other. Underlying these propositions is a very important principle—that of the right of access to information, including information of a recreational nature, of all citizens and the fact that this right is increasingly coming under pressure, especially from multinational media groups such as the Sky empire of Mr. Rupert Murdoch.
The significance of this can be illustrated by simple reference to the growth of television set ownership in the State. By 1995 a comparative survey of household facilities showed that 88 per cent of households had a vacuum cleaner, 85.6 per cent had a dishwasher, 99 per cent had piped could water, 96 per cent had a bath or shower, 97.2 per cent had an internal toilet and 99.8 per cent had electricity. These may all be seen as household necessities. However, with regard to television sets which were once regarded as luxuries, 88.2 per cent owned a colour television set, 6.7 per cent rented a colour television set, 3.8 per cent owned a monochrome set and 0.2 per cent rented a monochrome set. Adding these figures together, 98.9 per cent of Irish households possessed television receiving apparatus. This compares with a mere 51.1 per cent in possession of motorcars. In other words, television has become virtually a universal medium of communication in the country over a comparatively short period of time. Whoever controls that medium is in an exceedingly powerful position, for he or she controls the context within which ideas are formed and values created which colours our every decision.
Sport may appear to be at the lighter end of this spectrum but it is a very significant element for a number of reasons. The first, of course, is the immense popularity of sport—a phenomenon which is of universal and not of particularly Irish significance. Sport has always been popular, both for participants and spectators. However, although the capacity for participation in team events has some natural limitations, there seems to be no limit to the capacity for expansion in terms of a national and international viewing audience due to the rapid development of technology. As a document issued this month by the European Commission indicates:
The Broadcasting Sector has undergone profound changes over the last decade, due in large part to technology driven development. Cable and satellite channels have multiplied. The advent of digital transmission technology and, in particular, the emergence of multi channel digital packages transmitted by satellite is producing a dramatic increase in the number of channels available. These developments have brought a new transnational dimension to the practice of buying and selling sports rights.
This clearly has a significant commercial aspect and the undisciplined and unmonitored operation of market forces in this area should give rise to grave concern.
We have already begun to see the malignant impact of the intervention of groups such as Mr. Murdoch's BSkyB television on European and Irish sport. Just as the Murdoch group acquired and corrupted a great deal of the British print media by appealing to the lowest instincts of the reader and applying the lowest journalistic standards and has spread its tentacles into this country, undercutting Irish newspapers and winning a sizeable market share on the back of the popularity and economic pay off of its sports pages, we are now feeling the thin end of Mr. Murdoch's televisual wedge through the attempts of his empire to gain exclusive rights over major sporting events in Britain and Ireland.
In this context I found it astonishing to hear the President of the GAA, Mr. Boothman, having claimed for his organisation the status of a religion, demand also absolute freedom to deal with the reality of market forces in the best financial interests of the GAA. This was in the context of being asked about possible negotiations with Murdoch's Sky Television. Having heard this my last illusion of Irish innocence is gone. For the organisation that once penalised its members not merely for playing but for attending "foreign games" to contemplate selling exclusive rights to its major sporting events to an Australian-British-American baron of the gutter press beggars belief. It is as if the self-styled keeper of the national ethos had decided to feed the noble hound of Banba to a mongrel fox.
We are already receiving the incidental backwash of these developments. For example, "Live Line" on RTÉ Radio has been full of vociferous complaints against the growing commercialisation of sport, the appropriation of sizeable blocks of tickets to corporate sponsors and the adverse impact of monopoly tactics in broadcasting in general on the recreational outlets available to ordinary citizens. Recent debates have included a very lively session in which the overwhelming majority of callers objected vehemently to any suggestion of a monopoly sale to Murdoch of any of the GAA's sporting events. Listeners also heard some representative stories of the impact on an individual basis of the commercial policies of these communications empires. For example, one man telephoned to say that he had bought a ticket for his 14 year old son to see his favourite league side play a soccer match in England. The ticket and airline tickets were purchased six months in advance and hotel accommodation was arranged. Come the day of the match, however, they discovered that they were to be disappointed as there had been an unannounced rescheduling of the match in order to fit in with the programming requirements of commercial television. Such inconvenience to the public is but the tip of the iceberg. Indeed my response to these events makes me feel somewhat reactionary. I remember reading with scorn many years ago the words of a contemporary of James Joyce, one Arthur Clery, a fellow student of the writer's at UCD. In an essay, Clery wrote that "a nation that takes a British newspaper for its Sunday breakfast may one day wake to find a change in its Friday menu". I remember at the time superciliously dismissing such provincial chauvinism. Now, however, in middle age I am inclined to say "Hear, hear".
I have never been especially adept at decoding acronyms and I am not even sure what BSkyB stands for, although I suspect that it may be Big Sky Brother. In any case, I have no doubt whatever that the ultimate goal of Mr. Murdoch is to create a Big Brother in the sky. Of late we have seen an enormous concentration of resources in the world of media into the hands of a dangerously small number of people of whom the most prominent have been Mr. Rupert Murdoch and Mr. Robert Maxwell, who played Tweedledum to Mr. Murdoch's Tweedledee.
Murdoch's empire includes an enormous number of newspapers, television stations and satellite broadcast facilities. Individual stations have in the past shown themselves weak in the face of multinational industrial conglomerates. It is time that a warning signal was needed in this country about the impact of similar enterprises in the information field.
Europe has already awoken to the danger, as indicated by a resolution on the role of public service television in a multi-media society which was passed by the European Parliament on 19 September 1995. Having recited various high sounding formulae concerning the right of access to information, this resolution continues by making the important point that the citizen has a right to be regarded not just as a passive financial target.
Paragraph I of the resolution says:
Whereas a genuine quality public-service channel must aim to put the viewer in the position of a citizen and actor in relation to modern information and not simply in the position of a viewer or consumer.
It warns against precisely the kind of monopoly process I have already described in paragraph K, which states:
Whereas the rapid processes of concentration under way are leading to the emergence of highly powerful private transnational groups, with the result that public service broadcasting may be reduced to a marginal role, especially in the smaller countries.
With regard to sport it says:
Whereas EU competition rules should not produce a harmful fragmentation of European public service television when it is facing global competition, particularly where the acquisition of sport rights is concerned.
The resolution at paragraph 21 calls on the Commission to encourage the granting of transmission rights for major sports events to free-to-air television channels. Paragraph 22 considers inadmissible—including from the point of view of the correct application of the rules on competition— the improper granting of exclusive rights to broadcast sporting events and scientific and technical shows or events, which should be broadcast by all information media for the widest audience.
In paragraph 46 the resolution calls "on member states to regulate for the free-to-air transmission of major sporting events and entetainment or scientific events of particular value or interest". Paragraph 47 "calls on member states to regulate so that when other sporting events and entertainment or scientific events of particular value or interest are shown exclusively on paid television, comprehensive highlights must be available on free-to-air television".
I have edited severely the contents of this important document, but I think I have cut to the heart of the matter. It remains to ask what has Ireland done in response to this? The answer seems to be, sadly, little to date, although I see the Minister shaking his head. Therefore, I call this evening on the Government to act energetically in the manner already undertaken by other European Governments.
I thank you, a Chathaoirligh, for your flexibility in allowing me to finish my comments. I have some more points to add, but I believe I will have time to do so at the end of the debate.