One of the ways in which we can reflect on ourselves in film is through the relationship between television companies and film making. All the efforts to persuade RTÉ, and "persuade" is a gentle word, to be more willing to engage independent operators have been overwhelmingly successful. What is even more astonishing is the extraordinary success of the hopelessly underfunded TG4, which has discovered a range of imaginative television programmes with a shoestring budget that would be considered laughable in the rest of the world. It is a fraction, for example, of what the equivalent of TG4 in Wales has at its disposal.
It is an extraordinary achievement and a compliment to the capacity and quality of many indigenous film makers. I am not sure that they would have chosen to make programmes as Gaeilge if they had the choice but that was the only funding available. The station has been a remarkable success. In a time of comparative affluence it is a great pity that TG4 is still running on a shoestring. Its budget has been well spent and it is clear that if further money were available, it would be used with great imagination, flair and a little of the humour and devilment that are often missing from conventional film making output.
I am a fan of TG4, as are most television critics who do not look at it with their prejudices to the forefront. At least one TV critic is incapable of looking at TG4 without seeing only the negatives. Most of the critics and most of the people who bother to watch the station and have sufficient Irish to be able to enjoy it accept that TG4 does a remarkably good job. It only has a small audience but it was never going to attract a huge audience.
There is also the fourth or commercial TV channel. It is time the Minister talked to either the Independent Radio and Television Commission or to TV3. It is unobtainable in a considerable section of the country, including where Senator Tom Fitzgerald lives, although it must be said that the people in those areas are not missing much. However, since the station has a habit of spending its resources on buying sports programmes which otherwise would be available on RTÉ, their enterprise deprives at least 20% of the population of access to those programmes. This debate is about the need to use the audiovisual medium, in particular film, to reflect our identity in a successful way yet this television channel has no virtually no indigenous sport, no indigenous movies because it will not fund them and no indigenous culture. It does not use a word of our language from one end of the day to the other, has no indigenous drama and no indigenous anything except news and a few talk shows.
I am not sure that is what we want in a world where there is a limited number of terrestrial frequencies. It is useful to look at the ratings. Whatever big international movie TV3 shows in a particular week will be number one, with an audience of about 200,000 people which is approximately 8% of the full audience. That is followed by whatever sporting event the station has managed to buy which, in turn, is followed by that wonderful example of high quality culture, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There is enough satellite television available to satisfy that market. It would have been possible, and still is possible, to have a commercial television channel which can do a little more than simply buy in cheap international programming of the intellectual level of Mr. Jerry Springer. Instead, it could do something to reflect ourselves and how we are.
I am not seeking the equivalent of the highest quality produced by BBC2, Channel 4 or RTÉ. However, TV3 could do much better and it is a pity there is no agency to remind it that it has a commitment to quality as well as quantity and depth as well as breadth. There is a problem there and I ask the Minister to talk to the people concerned. It is a dreadful waste of a national resource.
We are attempting to develop an indigenous audiovisual and film industry but if I see another drama or movie about sexual repression by the Catholic Church in Ireland I will scream. It is a worn out topic. I am also tired of comedians who think they are funny because they do the brave deed of pulling the nose of the Catholic Church, as if it had any influence any more. As for the number of people who believe it is daring and an indication of how progressive one is to slip as many four letter words as possible into a programme, I consider it a schoolboy or schoolgirl reflection of the way Ireland was in the 1950s.
There are enough big themes in Ireland in 2000 to stimulate and challenge a creative artist. They run from, if I want to be highly political, the decline of a once great political party for one reason or another through to the dominance of our media by, essentially, one man, to growing inequality and the extraordinary cultural impact of the last seven years. Those years have produced huge change in every area of Irish life in terms of education and our social, religious and cultural values. Any artist of merit could pick a great deal from that. However, we will inevitably have yet another "powerful script" about repression in Ireland. Anybody who knows anybody under 25 years of age in this country will realise that whatever else they are, they are not repressed. The script might be an interesting picture of how Ireland used to be but it is not the stuff of challenging creative art.
We need to be challenged by artists about how we are, not given pictures of how we were. We all know how we were; enough has been said and written about it. I am not referring to serious documentaries on the awful things that were done but about creative script writing and stories. It is time many of our scriptwriters grew up and, like all artists, picked on the real powers in society at present rather than on safe targets which no longer have the power they had previously. They are easy targets and make people feel brave about themselves but they do not add much to either our stimulation or entertainment.
I wish An Bord Scannáin well. I hope the money is used creatively. I also hope the board will not fall into an Irish equivalent of the narrow view of what represents good film making. The relationship between our television service and film producing is far from complete. TG4 is underfunded so it cannot work there, TV3 is clearly determined not to spend money on those indigenous matters so we are left with RTÉ. There is an issue there with regard to RTÉ's part in the development of film and assistance in the development of film. If we are going to develop film commercially, that is one issue but if we want to be both commercial and different, a quality of scriptwriting and imagination will be required which, so far, I have not seen much of. I hope that through more imagination, challenge and stimulation, and perhaps a willingness to examine different ways of looking at things, we can make some progress.
I wish the Bill and the Minister well.
