Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 25 Mar 1936

Vol. 61 No. 2

In Committee on Finance. - Vote 64—Wireless Broadcasting.

Minister for Posts and Telegraphs (Mr. Boland)

I move:

Go ndeontar suim ná raghaidh thar £38,700 chun slánuithe na suime is gá chun íoctha an Mhuirir a thiocfaidh chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31adh lá de Mhárta, 1937, chun na dTuarastal agus na gCostaisí eile a bhaineann le Fóirleatha Neashrangach (Uimh. 45 de 1926).

That a sum not exceeding £38,700 be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1937, for the Salaries and other Expenses in connection with Wireless Broadcasting (No. 45 of 1926).

The amount of the Estimate for the broadcasting service for the year 1936-37 is £57,700 as compared with £40,838 for 1935-36 showing an increase of £16,862 mainly under sub-head F which provides for expenditure on plant and apparatus in connection with the projected increase in the power of the Athlone High Power Station.

The revenue from wireless receiving licences last year amounted to about £42,500, showing an increase of about £8,500.

Fees for advertisements and miscellaneous receipts amounted to about £24,000, which shows an increase of about £10,700 compared with the previous year.

The total broadcasting revenue amounted to £66,500.

The direct expenditure on the broadcasting service out of all Votes last year amounted to about £50,000 so that revenue exceeded direct Vote expenditure by about £16,500.

The number of wireless licences issued last year was 85,000 (approximately) which represents an increase of 18,800 over the previous year. The number of licences in the current financial year may reach 100,000, showing an increase of about 15,000. Special inspectors are employed throughout the country in detecting licence defaulters with very good results, and a large number of defaulters were prosecuted during the year.

The revenue from licence fees in the year 1936-37 has been estimated at £50,000 and from advertisements at £26,000, making total estimated revenue of £76,000.

The direct Vote expenditure during the year is estimated at £69,208, showing an estimated surplus of £6,792.

I have to explain, however, that no commercial account is prepared for broadcasting as for the Post Office and in considering total expenditure on the broadcasting service it is necessary in addition to the direct Vote expenditure to allow for capital charges in respect of cost of erection of stations, interest depreciation, etc., and if full allowance is made for these charges, broadcasting revenue would fall considerably short of broadcasting expenditure.

Provision has been made to increase the power of the Athlone High Power Station from 60 kilowatts to 100 kilowatts, which is the maximum allowed under international regulations. It is hoped to have the work completed before the end of 1936.

1. Programme hours have been extended during the past year by three and a half hours per week.

2. A beginning has been made in schools broadcasts. In the light of the experience in countries which have spent considerable sums on broadcasts to schools, it is advisable to go slowly in this direction. The subject is being considered with the Department of Education.

3. The microphone has been brought to the rural areas, wherever suitable telephone trunk lines were available and it is intended to develop this method of finding talent outside the cities. Some committees have been established informally, to offer suggestions for regional broadcasts. This form of direct co-operation with listeners has not been attempted outside of Ireland.

Eleven symphony concerts were breadcast in the season. Five of these were Station productions; five were given by the Dublin Philharmonic Society and one was from University College, Cork.

The total number of "outside" broadcasts in 1935 was 208.

Broadcast debates were introduced last year and subjects of public interest were discussed.

The broadcasting organisation has assisted musical endeavour by broadcasting from concert halls. It has in particular helped An Ceoil Cumann, which gives low-priced concerts in Dublin, and the Dublin Philharmonic Society.

A feature of special importance and considerable educational value is the reconstruction in dramatic form of historical events—great moments in Irish history.

Both of the important United States broadcasting chains—Columbia and N.B.C.—broadcast programmes from the Saorstát on the 16th and 17th March, 1936.

I think I am justified in claiming that there has been a considerable all round improvement in the broadcasting programmes during the last financial year, and I can promise that every effort will be made to make further improvements in the coming year.

Mr. McGilligan

The very reason the Minister gave us, when asking us to pass this Vote is, I suggest, a very good reason why the Vote should be referred back for reconsideration. First of all, I think in the circumstances something in the way of praise ought to be given to the management, or shall I say to the new director of the broadcasting station. It is very useful to find that Ministers could discover at least one ordinary graduate to be proud of at a time when they are trying to get rid of University representation in this House altogether. I think the director ought seriously to complain, and could justly complain, that all his efforts to put some life and interest and a little bit of novelty into a hopelessly inefficient station have been hampered because he has not enough finance in his hands allocated to that station. We have a Broadcasting Vote which this year is up by £16,500, and amounts to £57,700 as compared with £40,838 in the previous year. The Minister received from licences £50,000, and receipts from advertising were about £26,000.

I remember that at the time taxation was first put on wireless apparatus and wireless parts coming into this country, a definite pledge was given, and was repeated, that the money derived from that particular taxation would go to the improvement of the entertainment for listeners-in. Will anyone say that when we have over £50,000 from 85,000 listeners, and when we are getting nearly £26,000 from advertising, we have that improvement of the entertainment which we should have? I doubt if that is the full tot. It does not include the money got from this same development.

Mr. Boland

I gave the whole tot.

Mr. McGilligan

Is it the whole tot?

Mr. Boland

Yes, we are estimating here for the coming year.

Mr. McGilligan

Does it include special programmes?

Mr. Boland

Yes.

Mr. McGilligan

What is the amount of money received from the taxation of wireless material?

Mr. Boland

About £88,000.

Mr. McGilligan

The money coming into the station should be double or more than double. If there was more money available, as there should be, is there any doubt that better entertainment would be given to the people subscribing to the station? I may say that, having previously remarked that I think the new director has done a great amount of meritorious work in improving the station, and that if he has not been a greater success, that is due, on the face of it, to the fact that he does not get enough money. I do not think anybody, no matter how patriotically inclined, could honestly and conscientiously say that the station in this country compares at all favourably with any of the other big stations. I am as inclined as anybody to listen-in when there is anything broadcasted from this country and which gives native talent an opportunity of developing itself, but I find myself more and more tuning away in disgust from what is put on. I do not think that we get the benefit of any of that extra £88,000 from broadcasting taxation. I do not think there is any proper consciousness of the value, both for good and bad, of what is broadcasted night after night, or whether what is allowed to be sent out is an advertisement for the Irish station.

I, personally, believe there is much more talent in the country than what has been discovered, and the reason that the director is not thinking about getting it, as he would like to get it, is because he is conscious of the fact that he has no means of inducing people to come forward to offer their services. There is much highly-specialised talent awaiting exploitation, not only for the good of that talent, but, also, for the good of the country generally. We get no advertisement from that because the director is cribbed, cabined and confined in his attempt to do good by the fact that he is deprived of the money promised to the station from the taxation of wireless parts coming in. If it was for no reason other than to call attention to the fact that the station is starved, I think this Estimate should be referred back for further consideration. That motion should be agreed to by anybody who will take a course of listening-in night after night, then switching off at random to anywhere else and seeing whether he can really support a vote of any confidence in the station after a comparison in a lengthy course of a month, or two or three months with a group of other stations. The Minister referred—I do not know whether it was because he thought it was a new item or that he was proud of it—to what he called great moments in Irish history. Are these the great escapes from jails? These are part of it, I suppose. There was novelty in one or two of them.

Mr. Boland

You should not refer to those.

Mr. McGilligan

They are events which I must refer to, because they were no tribute to the ingenuity of the person who thought of them, and no tribute to the imagination of the person who continued them. There was a spice of novelty about the first one or two, but the novelty was somewhat spoilt when you opened the newspaper the next morning and found a few people writing in to say "I had a whole lot to do with it, and my name was never mentioned." The men who had, so to speak, done good for the country by stealth, blushed the next day to find their deeds broadcast, while others who wanted them broadcast found that it had only given rise to newspaper controversy as to whether they did anything at all or not. I do not know if that is to be found under the heading of "Great Moments in Irish History." There are some moments in most peoples' lives, and I suppose also in the life of the nation, which are better forgotten. Those things might have been expressed and presented in a different way; there might have been something spicy and attractive about them; there might have been something that would lure the ordinary listener-in to listen-in again; but certainly after one or two had been given in a particular way, why they were persevered in passes my comprehension. Of course, to recreate events of that kind was an almost impossible task, except for people of terrific imaginative powers, and a certain amount of delicacy in self suppression. I do not know why anybody should ever have thought of entrusting to the people to whom it was entrusted, the matter of trying to recreate a night out with or in attendance on some flying column or brigade in Tipperary or elsewhere, which might have been made a good thing of if properly done. Could anybody who listened-in, except perhaps the immediate relatives of two or three people who were themselves interested, have felt that it was something that he would have brought a stranger or an alien to listen-in to, and that he could have sat in his own house while that was being poured forth and been easy in his conscience or his mind about the whole thing. However, those are, so to speak, minor matters.

What I complain of mainly about the station is that at the moment it is being used as an instrument in politics. The station and its political uses have gone to a point that has probably not been excelled anywhere except in Fascist Italy or Nazi Germany. Of course, there is a variety of ways in which it operates. I am amazed at times when I hear some of the things put up there under Government auspices. I know there must have been a battle-royal between the sort of silencing effects of the Government Publicity Bureau and the sort of natural tendency to talk about something which must attach to a person in a broadcasting station. There is, on the one hand, the method of suppressing things via the Government Publicity Bureau, and, on the other hand, there is the giving out of information, with a difference, through the station. I wonder will the Minister accept it or will he require examples when I make the statement that a considerable amount of censorship goes on with regard to items that are broadcast by people who are asked to deliver lectures on important matters, people who are asked to present their views about a variety of subjects to the country through the medium of the broadcasting station. Does the Minister know or does he agree that anything which is said is subject to quite a severe and rigid type of censorship?

Mr. Boland

Yes.

Mr. McGilligan

A censorship might, of course, be easily tolerable with regard to say, preventing the broadcasting of matters that would shock the public taste. If anybody would ever think of stooping to such a thing as obscenity over the air, that has to be guarded against, and there is nothing to complain of in the director seeing the manuscript of what is going to be said. But does the Minister know that views which are about to be expressed by individuals who have been invited to give, say, their experience in different places, or their theories about different matters are subject to a censorship which operates in a variety of peculiar ways? May I say also that I think there is more than one hand at the censorship? Sometimes an unfortunate person who is to broadcast thinks he is free when he has escaped from one person, only to find that there is another individual who lops off some of his sentences, destroys some of his theories, and disturbs some of his thoughts. The way it operates, I understand, even as between individuals, is that in some cases people have their manuscripts returned to them with what are called suggestions. Of course if the suggestions are not accepted there is another way of handling that. At other times the manuscripts are rewritten. Of course the writing is only a suggestion again, but if any person has the hardihood to go down to the station intending to say over the air what he has previously written, he finds that just as he goes before the microphone there is put into his hands a document which is part of his own manuscript with part blotted out and he has got to extemporise in order to fill the gap. That is not rewriting but, at any rate, it is definitely made clear that such and such a sentence is not going to be tolerated, and you can make up whatever you like to fill the gap. Sometimes the manuscript is rewritten. The Minister has admitted that there is censorship——

Mr. Boland

I have not admitted any censorship like that.

Mr. McGilligan

Does the Minister believe it goes to that point? Would he tolerate it if it went to that point? Without his knowing whether this is so or not, would the Minister say he would approve of that being done?

Mr. Boland

Does the Deputy want me to answer questions while he is speaking, or will he be satisfied if I answer them when he sits down? I prefer to wait until the Deputy is finished.

Mr. McGilligan

I am speaking of what I know. I thought the Minister might have sufficient knowledge of the principles on which he is trying to operate the broadcasting station to let me know off-hand whether he thinks it proper to censor people who are invited to speak. Is it proper that they should find their manuscripts scored and their thoughts distorted and warped by comment and sometimes by counter-suggestion? We find during the year that it is a growing feature of the wireless programme in the country that all sorts of persons, distinguished and otherwise, are made to mount the stairs, go into the room, and lecture this country on how well it is getting on. I suppose there never was such a variety of American accents as we had this year telling us how lucky we were to be in this country and not in the United States of America. We had all sorts of city folk, as they described themselves, telling the farmers of this country that they never were better off. Recently here on St. Patrick's Day, in answer to the President, Archbishop Mannix told us—it is only hearsay, of course— that they were glad to know that the standard of living of the masses in this country had been raised. I am sure that on the day when that particular sentence smote the ear of the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs he must have groaned, because at that time he must have been preparing the elaborate defence which he gave us a few minutes ago, when he said that the reason why the standards of the Post Office workers had not been raised was that the masses of the people could not have their standard raised. Yet Archbishop Mannix told us from far-off Australia that they were glad the standard of living of the masses had been raised. I should like him to go out and broadcast that in person to the masses, and see would he get just as enthusiastic a reception as, at the far end of the wireless, he thinks he gets. That was only the climax to what went on continuously through the summer and autumn. The least known of the people who were able to come here under the auspices of the Tourist Development Association, after having a quick run round the island of from ten days to three weeks, spent one very valuable half-hour or so of that very short period to let the people of this country who are living through all the mess know that they are in some way mesmerised if they think they are doing badly, and that if they only knew what these people knew from knocking around in tourist coaches they would be able to bear the ills the Lord has sent them.

Is it a fact that these people were chosen because their views had been ascertained beforehand or how were these people selected? Were the names put in a hat? As my mind runs back over the four or five people, I do not see any reason why they should have been invited to speak even in a fast-moving tram-car not to speak of broadcasting. They were in no way distinguished, did not mark themselves out as economic experts, and had played no part in the economic life of their own country that one can hear of. They certainly had not such a recent attachment to this country as to enable them to speak with any experience. It seems to me strange that all the people chosen, as they went into the doorway or mounted the stairs of the broadcasting station, were seemingly seized straight away with the terrific idea of the pleasure of living here with the raised standard of living. There was not a soul invited to broadcast who had not found it the pleasantest of all places to live in. I do not think that was an ordinary selection. I do not think it was a selection except by a peculiar choice. Does the Minister think, however much he may want to develop through the people of the country the idea that they are doing so well, that it is good policy to have the station used for that sort of thing?

We are used to the activities of certain people and know how to rate the activities of those people who, after a fortnight here, cannot keep themselves from writing to the newspapers. Most of the newspapers willingly give a couple of columns of vacant space to these people. They rather invite them, in fact. Of course, letters lead to counter letters and sometimes there are debates, and sometimes controversy. At any rate, there has been, as far as the newspapers are concerned, something in the way of an interchange of views. But, as far as the station is concerned, everybody who goes in seems to be moulded immediately into this tremendous optimism. As I say, I should like to have some idea whether the censorship is working in a new way there and whether people have been rejected, not part of their thoughts abstracted from manuscripts, but have been rejected in toto because it was found that they were not going to give the stuff the Minister more or less feels he is paid to get given out.

That is one side of it. Then there is another matter. It seems to me to be an incredible thing, but it has been remarked on so much to me by people that I must take it as a definite fact until I get an explanation. I do not know if it is pettiness, or if it occurred at all. I am inclined to think it is incredible. I do not know, but if it is a fact, what is the explanation? It seems to me so petty that I hardly like to say that there is anything like political significance attached to it. There was a show here at which there was a particular animal, bred by, I will call him a very distinguished individual of this country which got the maximum price at the show. The broadcast that night gave a lot of prices and never mentioned this animal although it was the best there. I wonder is it a fact that it was not broadcast? I have been told it was not. It has been remarked upon to me by dozens of people. I did not listen-in that night myself. If that is a fact, is it not the pettiest of petty spite that a matter like that——

Mr. Briscoe

Are you making the statement that it was not? I am aware it was.

Mr. McGilligan

You are the first that made it. I should like to get it from the Minister authoritatively.

Mr. Victory

I heard it also.

Mr. McGilligan

And the price given?

Mr. Briscoe

And the price given.

Mr. McGilligan

Remember, that I started by saying that it was incredible to me that it should have been so.

Mr. Briscoe

I say it was.

Mr. McGilligan

I am not taking that from the Deputy because I found him out too often on other things.

Mr. Briscoe

You were found out yourself.

Mr. Moore

You wished it happened.

Mr. McGilligan

I think it would be the lowest of low tricks. I said it was put to me by a dozen people. I said I could hardly credit it and, as a start, I asked was it a fact. I want the Minister to tell me.

Mr. Boland

I will tell you.

Mr. McGilligan

If it is not so, the statement that it is not so, made authoritatively would destroy anything I have said.

Mr. Moore

It may not.

Mr. McGilligan

Really, Deputies opposite have very little belief in themselves. If it had happened, it was only to be related to what I call the general politics of the situation. The whole explanation the Minister had to offer with regard to what he called Deputy Norton's propaganda on the last Vote was that until outside people are raised to a particular level he is not going to raise the Post Office workers. He said he would not ask the Minister for Finance to increase the wages of the low grade Post Office employees until people outside are getting as much as these low grade employees.

There is one picture. Let me give another. The President himself in a recent debate about the coal-cattle pact said, in answer to an interjection by Deputy Belton, that if he was in a stronger position he would not have made the bargain that he was then describing as certainly not a very good one.

Mr. Boland

Is the coal-cattle pact relevant to this Vote?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

It is not.

Mr. McGilligan

I suggest with all respect that it is because the President had broadcast a talk about the position of this country, and I want to contrast that with what he said to the people of this country.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Surely the Deputy does not suggest that everything the President broadcasts should be discussed?

Mr. McGilligan

Not by any means, any more than I think we should be frightened of mentioning anything else that is broadcast. The President said that only he was in a weak position he would not have made a certain bargain. He told us before that certain moneys were being extracted with more dislocation than if they were paid straight away. Was there any appreciation on the part of anybody who listened to the St. Patrick's Day broadcast that it had been stated by the President that we were in a weakened condition? If anybody is afraid to talk about the pact, let us not say why we are in a weakened position, but let us say that that statement was made authoritatively here by the President.

What was the use made of the air as far as this country's President was in control of it on St. Patrick's Day? Everything was lovely. The Minister told us to-night that it was not. Archbishop Mannix, after hearing the President, wires back: "Was glad to hear that the standard of living of the masses of the people had been raised." The President did not tell us that beforehand, and the Minister denies it to-night. In addition to that, the President decided that part of his St. Patrick's Day performance must be the thrusting on the eyes of the world of the economic war. If people are engaged in a conflict with their neighbours, I do not see the necessity of letting the world know about it on a special occasion like that. There were three relays being made that day, not entirely on that subject. The President added a statement which one of his own Ministers previously denied.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Will the Deputy move to report progress?

Mr. McGilligan

I move to report progress.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again to-morrow.