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Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 20 Mar 1962

Vol. 194 No. 1

Adjournment Debate. - Mount Leinster Television Transmitter: Interference with U.T.V. Programmes.

Deputy Ryan gave notice that he would raise the subject matter of Question No. 83 on the Order Paper of 1st March on the Adjournment.

Mr. Ryan

As you are aware, this matter refers to the action of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs which will result in a certain amount of what I believe is unnecessary, undesirable and stupid interference with the existing reception from UTV and BBC in the Dublin area and westward and south of Dublin. It is my contention that either serious mistakes or deliberate policy is the only explanation for the proposed interference with the reception of both UTV and BBC programmes now available for owners of TV sets in Dublin.

The Minister, in a subsequent statement which he made public, was rather scathing about the quality of the reception available from UTV and BBC. Admittedly, it is not as good as we can now fortunately get from Telefís Éireann but it is good enough for the people, is acceptable, and what they want. I do not believe the Department should allow anything or deliberately cause anything to interfere with the reception already available and which was satisfactory enough to encourage over 100,000 people to invest their hard-earned savings in sets over the past four or five years.

That the Department are quite capable of making mistakes is clearly shown by the fact that they chose Channel A for the Gort station, although the Department had already signed away the use of Channel A under international agreement. The excuse now being offered that they are changing from Channel A to Channel B in order to reduce interference with the BBC is merely camouflage, and the Minister knows that well.

If the Minister is sincere—and I believe him to be a sincere individual, whatever about the Government's intentions or declarations—he can prevent the degree of interference which he says is inevitable. I am advised that technically there is no reason whatever why the allocation which I will read in a few moments could not be made and which would result in little or no interference with the reception now available on UTV and BBC channels. The result would be that a large number of people could continue to enjoy the reception which has been available to them for several years from these two quarters.

If the Minister refuses to adopt the solution which I understand has been put to his Department and to him and which I am now deliberately putting on the records of this House, he personally will be to blame and his Party and Government can accept all the responsibility they deserve for denying to Telefís Éireann the goodwill they have every right to expect because the blame for all this will fall back on Telefís Éireann whereas, in fact, it lies entirely upon the Minister because he is the person who allocates the channels.

The solution which could now be implemented is to swop the channels allocated to Dublin and Sligo with each other and to swop the channels which it is proposed to allocate to Mount Leinster and Cork with each other. If that were done it would remove several of the excuses the Minister gave in his public statement. The result of all that would be as follows: Dublin or Kippure would be on Channel 11 for the 405 line and Channel 1 for the 625 line which at the moment it is proposed to give to Sligo, and Sligo would be on Channel 7 for the 405 line and Channel H for the 625 line.

I am advised that the number of people who might be at any loss by that being done would be about 1,000 out of over 100,000 people who have sets, and even those people could have their sets adapted from Channel 7 to Channel 11 for about £3 a set. It seems to me the height of folly not to do this now before more people invest money in sets that carry Channel 7 only or before our manufacturers manufacture sets that carry Channel 7 only. Galway would remain unchanged, that is to say, if the Minister has Channel B for Galway; but Kilkenny, instead of Cork, would have Channel D and Cork would have Channel F instead of its being given to Kilkenny.

All this is technically possible and now is the time to do it before further public or private money is wasted and which will certainly result in interference with the reception now available.

The Minister advanced as an excuse for not transferring the Cork Channel 6 or Channel D to Kilkenny that it would be too near Channel 7 or Channel H in Dublin and that therefore there would be a certain amount of interference for people in the southern midlands but, under the solution I have offered the Minister, if Channel 9 F were moved to Cork and 6 D to Mount Leinster there would be a difference of five channels between Mount Leinster and Dublin; there would be a difference of three channels between Belfast and Mount Leinster and Channel 9 would be further away from Belfast than ever before, meaning that there would be practically no interference whatsoever with UTV in Dublin and, as UTV cannot reach the southern area at present it would not affect people in the Cork area, and they would not lose anything at all.

I understand that the Channel 11 transmitter, which is to go into Sligo, is now in the country—I may be wrong —but certainly it is not yet erected and it would be perfectly possible to erect this transmitter on Kippure without interference with the service but, certainly, even if there were to be a short interval in transmission from Telefís Éireann it would be better to do that now than to deny to the people who have enjoyed a choice of two programmes for several years past—three programmes since 1st January—what they invested their hard-earned money to get.

I have no personal axe to grind in this matter. I do not watch television. I watch the Government and that is a full-time job. It leaves me little time for the relaxation which many people enjoy and to which they are entitled. What I am particularly concerned about is the tens of thousands of people in Dublin and north of Dublin and across the midlands over to the north west who have invested large sums of money in television sets over the last four or five years.

In his statement the Minister admitted that the interference would become greater as one moved west and south of the City of Dublin. I have the privilege of representing the people of Dublin South-West constituency and they are in the main hard working people and most of them acquired their sets on the hire purchase system. They have expended anything from £80 to £100 over the last few years or are committed to pay that amount over the next few years. These people at present enjoy a choice of three television programmes. It is no reflection on Telefís Éireann to say that they might want to look at some of the programmes to which they have become attuned over the last few years. One can quote the words, as the Minister did, of the head of Telefís Éireann, Mr. Eamonn Andrews, that "the worst thing that could happen to Irish Television is to have no opposition anywhere."

The Minister suggested that the matter was not a serious one because reception of these stations was available only in the north and east. That may be so, geographically speaking, but numerically speaking, there is a far greater density of population and a much greater concentration of television sets in the north and east because it covers all Dublin city and county which has—it is unfortunate, but it has—about one-third of the population of the State. Then, if you move north, you have Dundalk, Drogheda, Counties Monaghan, Sligo, Donegal and the Midlands. I have not had an opportunity of adding up the number of sets in that area but that is where the main concentration is by reason of the fact that the people have enjoyed a choice of two programmes over the past four or five years and a third programme since the beginning of this year. These are the people who will be the main sufferers. If there is a reasonable alternative available, which could be implemented now at less cost and with the least inconvenience, then now is the time to do it.

Telefís Éireann would never have been possible, were it not for the fact that these people, who are now to be deprived of a choice of three programmes, had invested their money in television sets. I do not know what the total cost of the investment is but it runs into millions of pounds. If these people had not got sets on 1st January, the Minister had no hope of collecting £4 television licences from about 100,000 owners of sets in the State and Telefís Éireann would never have come about. It seems to be extremely shabby practice to say to these people that the investment they made is now to be destroyed and they are to be deprived of something they had every right to expect.

I wonder what kind of outcry there might be if Radio Éireann were to broadcast with such a strong transmission that all foreign stations were cut out? The row that would develop would be even louder than any transmission they could send out, and rightly so. To propose the alternative I am proposing is not a question of being anti-national—far from it. It is a question of allowing the people here a choice of programme. It is because I have every confidence in the excellence of Telefís Éireann— because it certainly has improved and it has given a service of which we can be proud, considering the limited time in which it has been in operation and the limited amount of finance available to it—that I think the Minister is doing a grave disservice to suggest by implication that it cannot suffer interference from outside.

It has caused a certain amount of talk that when it was decided to reduce interference, it was the B.B.C., which is a subsidiary of the British Department of Posts and Telegraphs, which was kindly considered and not U.T.V. It may well be that Telefís Éireann want to monopolise the advertising in television in this country. If that be so, it would be better that they should say it, and steps could be taken by the Minister for Finance or somebody else to encourage people to advertise only on Telefís Éireann and exclude them from advertising on foreign stations. But to deny people reasonably good programmes in that service because of anxiety to monopolise the fees for television advertising seems to me to be extremely unfair and most undesirable.

The Minister's statement is a vexatious one. It suggests he is not bound to protect the rights of people to a choice of three programmes because there is no international obligation on him to do so. I never suggested, nor do I think anybody suggested, there is. What we are saying is that there is a moral obligation on him to protect the investment of those who have already invested money. I am prepared to concede I used a word which might not be technically accurate when raising a supplementary on 1st March. I referred to twenty different frequencies. The Minister has pointed out that this is not quite right. I do not think his phrase that he entirely repudiates my statement is entirely fair. In return for the concession I am making, I would ask the Minister to concede that an error by omission was made in page three of his statement in which he uses the sentence "We were assigned sufficient frequencies at the Stockholm Conference in Bands 1 and 3 to provide two separate services, one on 405 lines and the other on 625 lines, a system which uses a band width of eight megacycles." That would suggest to anybody who did not know otherwise that both 405 and 625 used eight megacycles. My information is that 405 uses only five megacycles. The statement ought to have made that clearer. I could entirely repudiate what the Minister says, but I think it would be better, when discussing technical things not to be so emphatic in one's statements.

The Minister refused, in reply to Deputy Sweetman and again in his statement, to go into the technical reasons for the assignment to particular stations of the frequencies allotted to us. If the Minister has any technical reasons he should state them. There are people in the trade, people who are expert technically, who have different views on this matter from those of the Minister and his Department. If the Minister has good and valid reasons for not adopting their suggestions, he should give them in the fullest detail. It might not mean a great deal to me or to the Minister personally but it certainly would to the people technically competent.

I would ask the Minister to reconsider the whole matter and at this stage to do the right thing by the people who now have a choice of three programmes. To say that he will not give the people a choice of three programmes because it might interfere with a minority is to say that justice will not be done to 200 people because one person might not have as good a service as that on the home television. I do not believe the Minister is technically correct in what he says in that regard. If the allocations I suggest are adopted, there will be no particular difficulty. On that account I would ask the Minister sincerely to reconsider his steps at this stage, to change the channels and to give to hundreds of thousands of television owners here what they are entitled to: a choice of three programmes. If he does that, he will be doing credit to Telefís Éireann and to himself.

Let me say, first of all, that our first obligation is to ourselves.

Mr. Ryan

Hear, hear!

That obligation is to our own viewers, to give them satisfactory reception of the home programmes. Our second obligation is to ensure that Telefís Éireann transmissions do not cause any interference within the service areas of transmitters of other administrations. In fully ten minutes of the twenty minutes Deputy Ryan has spoken here, he gave me more technical advice in relation to the disposition of Telefís Éireann stations than I could possibly get from the highly qualified people at my disposal and at the disposal of Radio Éireann. The Stockholm Conference lasted a month. It was attended by the engineers of all the European administrations and they spent a whole month discussing this matter before agreement was reached on the allocation of frequency to the countries represented at that Conference.

Now, we are as much concerned in relation to reception by members of the public who own television sets as Deputy Ryan is. Before the Stockholm Conference, we were not in a position to decide on any line standard for our service other than 405. As a result of the good work done at that Conference by the representatives of this country, our Government found themselves in the position of deciding for either 625 or 405. Notwithstanding the fact that the adoption of 625 transmission as the standard line here will cost a good deal more than if we had remained on the 405 line standard, we are also providing for 405 line transmission from Dublin and Sligo because there are people in possession of 405 line receivers and we want to make it possible for them to get our 405 line as well as other 405 line receptions from outside stations. There is no such thing as interference-free reception and the reason for the Stockholm Conference was to reduce to the minimum any interference that might be caused as between one station and another.

In relation to the statement made by Deputy Ryan that there are people who have views on this matter other than the views expresed and the decisions taken by the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, I want now to tell Deputy Ryan and the House that a deputation from the Wireless Dealers' Association discussed this whole matter with representatives of my Department and Radio Éireann on 9th March last. There was a long and frank discussion lasting for an hour and a half, at the end of which the Association indicated that they were fully satisfied that the arrangements we were making were the best that could be made.

In the course of the discussion with the Wireless Dealers' Association they accepted that there was really no alternative to the choice of Channel F for Mount Leinster, but they questioned whether a station was necessary there at all, whether its power could be reduced, particularly towards the north, and whether one or two small satellite stations would not suffice. The Post Office and Radio Éireann technical experts were able to convince them that a station of 50 kilowatt power was needed to cover the parts of Wicklow which are in shadow from Kippure, as well as Counties Wexford and Waterford. They also convinced them that the offset arrangements proposed for Mount Leinster would be far more beneficial from the point of view of protecting the U.T.V. transmissions, than a very substantial reduction in power. The offset arrangements proposed would have the same effect as reducing the power of Mount Leinster from 50 kilowatts to 1/5th of a kilowatt and leaving it exactly on the same frequency.

Any change in the characteristics of the Mount Leinster station would involve consulting a number of other administrations. That same argument applies with equal force to a number of other suggestions made by Deputy Ryan tonight in relation to the switching of these lines and frequencies. We would have to go to all these other administrations——

Mr. Ryan

Why not?

——and get their consent before we could break the agreement reached and adopt Deputy Ryan's suggestions. Any change would have to be in accordance with the procedure laid down at Stockholm. We would have no case for looking for a change in the frequency for Mount Leinster because all we can claim is that we should have assignments which will give us a domestic service of good quality and the assignments we have received are in accordance with the planning principles adopted by the Stockholm Conference.

There are many people who do not realise that interference cuts both ways and that it would be silly to try deliberately to blot out another station because this would automatically reduce the service area of one's own transmitter. There is just no question of anyone trying to blot out reception from either the Six Counties or the B.B.C. We must all bear in mind not alone the stations which are already in operation but also stations not yet existing for which assignments are held by other administrations. In the United Kingdom roughly half of the nine Band III channels are not in use at present as they are reserved for a possible third 405 line service. The United Kingdom holds frequency assignments, however, for stations in all 14 of the 405 line Channels in Bands I and III. That country was assigned frequencies for 146 stations at Stockholm—an average of ten for each Channel — and the permitted power of the stations varies from 1 kilowatt to 500 kilowatts. Among the assignments are ones for the following new stations in Northern Ireland: Channel 5, Enniskillen; Channel 6, Black Mountain; Channel 8, Koram Hill; and Channel 12, Koram Hill.

Deputy Ryan may not have had that information at his disposal when he decided to raise this matter here tonight and to make suggestions for switching frequencies.

Mr. Ryan

That does not clash with anything I said.

According as additional stations are opened in Great Britain and Northern Ireland, to cover areas of poor reception, the range of existing stations will become less and less because of mutual interference between stations. This is something over which we can exercise no control and it is bound to have an adverse effect on reception of B.B.C. and U.T.V. programmes in this country. In this connexion the proposed change from Channel A to Channel B for the Gort station may not prove to be of much advantage to Irish viewers who have been in the habit of viewing the Six Counties B.B.C. transmissions on Channel I as a new station will be opened on the same Channel within the next few months at Llandona in North Wales and is quite likely to interfere with the reception along the east coast from the Belfast station.

We were awaiting confirmation in relation to the change from Channel A to Channel B from one country and I am glad to say that that confirmation arrived today. I do not think there is anything further I need say. We have the best possible advice we can get. From the outset we made it our business to ensure that we would have the best possible technical advice when we set out to establish a T.V. service as a public corporation. There is no reason why I should doubt the advice I got in relation to this matter. The allocations are the best possible that could be got in the circumstances. So far as the future is concerned, large numbers of people who are now getting fringe reception from outside stations will continue to get that fringe reception. The picture may not be as clear as the picture from Telefís Éireann, but it is only since Telefís Éireann started that people here have found themselves in a position to judge for themselves the quality of the picture from Telefís Éireann as compared with the quality of the picture they were getting by fringe reception from outside stations.

The Dáil adjourned at 11 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 21st March, 1962.

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