When I reported progress I was speaking about the damage to public telephone kiosks in this city and I expressed the hope that the Post Office engineers would make every effort to ensure that the city and other parts of the country would have an adequate public telephone service. The position appears to worsen each year. We can only ask those who can bring an influence to bear on the culprits to discourage them from committing these acts of vandalism.
I mentioned also the question of no postal deliveries in the city on Saturday mornings. We realised that postmen, as did others, sought a five-day week so I do not know what the answer to the problem might be. If a person should miss the post on a Thursday, it is likely that the letter will not be received until Monday morning.
The increases in postal charges which were effected some time ago were not very popular. The graphs of rising expenditure bring home to us what a tremendous State industry our postal service is. There was a time when the postal service was not running at a loss but that day has gone. Of course, the Post Office services are much better now than what they were before. The charges are higher and these charges bear very heavily on most sections of the community. They bear particularly heavily on any persons engaged in the work of charitable organisations. Will the Minister consider the position of recognised charities when he comes to give concessions as regards postal charges?
The new stamp designs have a high standard. The name of the country is printed in Irish on them. Foreigners have the idea that it refers to the Twenty-six Counties. The name of Ulster could be equated with that. Would the Minister consider having a bilingual stamp? It might correct any erroneous impression that the other six counties are excluded. The English version of the constitution gives the name of Éire as "Ireland" and it might be difficult to get it all on the stamp. Perhaps the Minister could look into this matter. People throughout the world who receive our stamps could be shown that the word "Éire" covers the whole country and not one part of it.
We know it is easy to criticise the radio and television services. What do we expect of them? Sometimes they have got to be all things to all men. Very few of us will agree on a programme to look at all the time. We want the service to provide information, education and entertainment. In the educational sense the service has tremendous power; it could be run at a reasonably low cost, yet reach millions of our people. Other countries have universities of the air, utilising radio and television in an educational way. We have done the same thing with Telefís Scoile and educational programmes, but they have never been co-ordinated although they are quite good. RTE should have an educational division whose sole duty would be to prepare or acquire educational programmes to be transmitted after working hours to benefit people wanting further education.
The radio and television media have a glorious opportunity to become a part of the national scene, which has not happened so far. This station is not the property of any group inside or outside the RTE : it belongs to the people. So far it has failed to reflect the national aspirations. When the television service was opened ten years ago it was said that people would not compare Telefís Éireann with foreign stations. It is now only a struggling babe. Given a few years it will come up to the standard of the outside stations. Telefís Éireann has not got the resources to put on such lavish programmes as the others. It is ten years old. In some ways it has succeeded; in others it has failed.
I should mention the Saturday night Late Late Show. It has a crude vitality. Plenty of hard work goes into it but the subject matter leaves a lot to be desired. Late on Saturday nights people turn away from that show and switch on English soccer matches. The BBC puts on two soccer matches, after which people can see two further matches from Belfast. Four soccer matches in one night is too much. People do that, having chosen the lesser of the two evils. They either look at the Late Late Show for one and a half hours or they watch four soccer matches in succession for nearly three hours, which is a pity.
Up until March last year the wireless and television licences of 40,000 households were not renewed. I do not know if these people cannot pay or whether they have got rid of their radios and television sets. We looked forward greatly to having our own television station. The people are now not using it as much as they might have done. I am trying to be quite fair to the people in RTE. I appreciate that to turn out programmes every night of the week, hour after hour, takes some doing. If their audience reaction measurement is giving the right feedback they will realise that the people want programmes which are wholesome and which reflect our outlook on matters generally.
We are aware that there may be some people in RTE who want to put over some kind of philosophy which is not subscribed to by the majority of the people. If they want to do that on the streets, that is their privilege in a democracy, but there should not be any attempt to put over a socialist programme, or a capitalist one for that matter, under the guise of amusement, entertainment or education.
Last year an outside broadcast unit went to Berlin and made a programme contrasting life in East and West Berlin. It was heavily weighted in favour of East Berlin, despite the fact that some of the pictures we see every day show that the standard of life is much higher in West Berlin. I protested to a member of the RTE staff and he admitted that he had received other protests. If I want to think about Berlin or Germany, I want to do my own thinking on it. I do not want to have it done for me by somebody in RTE. This programme was slanted. It may be considered that I am not very liberal in my views on this matter, but a member of the staff of RTE admitted to me that they had received other protests that the programme was slanted.
If we are to look to the national television service to raise the quality of our national life, we have the right to demand that this should be done. We have the right to demand that the taxpayer who is paying the piper calls the tune and that we get a fair service on matters political. There was some criticism of the programmes dealing with the recent Fianna Fáil Ard-Fheis. I have no fault to find with the programmes or with the cameras on that occasion. If there are happenings and the cameras show them, it is the duty of the cameramen to show them. Telefís Éireann were criticised for showing films of the northern troubles from 1969 up to recently. It was suggested that they had inflamed the troubles there. In fairness to the staff of RTE who went to the North, and who were in danger of great violence and injury at all times, they went in there and they brought back the pictures of what was happening in the North. They did not fake the pictures any more than they faked them in Dublin. It has been suggested that this aggravated the trouble.
The point is that any programme on Telefís Éireann may aggravate some situation. I will not criticise them for it. If there have been happenings here and in the North which they reported without any gimmickry or trickery I will stand by them. Let them show what happens and let the viewers make up their minds on the rights or wrongs of the situation. We do not want any group in Telefís Éireann presenting a philosophy to suit themselves.
In a democracy, means of communication, especially radio and television, must be watched very vigilantly all the time. The medium must be the servant of the people and not their master. We hear television sets referred to as the one-eyed monster. We can appreciate that unless there is a balanced approach both inside the station and outside it we could create a frightful monster which would try to mould the minds of the mass of the people. To prevent this we should have a completely free television service and when I say "free" I mean that it should be free from any influences which might tend to colour the picture presented. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance and the price of a really free and independent television service is that it must be watched all the time. Otherwise some day we may regret that we were not more watchful.
As I said earlier, I look to the television service not only to entertain and educate and instruct but also to try to improve the quality of life so far as possible. We see discussion programmes and interviews with individuals which are presented very well indeed and in a fair manner, both by the interviewed and the interviewers. One can see the greatly improving standards of the interviewers. This is as it should be. Whether we belong to the Fianna Fáil, the Fine Gael, or the Labour Party, we should be the watchdogs of the people and, while we are entitled to our political viewpoint, we are not entitled to shove it down the throats of others. A State service must not be allowed to become a kind of political monster.
I have heard it said from the Fine Gael benches that some politicians dominate the national screen. I do not know if that is true because I am not the most avid television viewer. I have very little time to watch television. There seems to be a suggestion that if you admit you are not a television viewer this gives you a higher status. The in-phrase is: "I heard it on the radio" rather than "I saw it on television". If one is an RTE viewer one must endure the advertisements from which the station gets a very big slice of its revenue. I suppose that is understandable. Watching some of the advertisements, and particularly the advertisements for detergents, I often feel that I could be watching television in Leeds or Blackburn or somewhere in Lancashire because they all seem to be foreign made. Nothing is left to the imagination of the housewife who uses these detergents.
Time after time they come on. Surely we could be given a respite of an hour perhaps from these. We used to attack the drinking advertising on Telefís Éireann. I suppose it is still worthy of comment but I wonder what the plans are for recouping the losses which will be incurred when cigarette and tobacco advertising is phased out completely. This advertising must contribute a huge amount of revenue. We must face the fact that this is coming to an end. Are we prepared to pay a higher licence fee for such very mediocre programmes on the national grid? It has been proved, I think fairly conclusively, that chest troubles and lung troubles may well be checked by phasing out this kind of advertising. If that is so what we lose on the swings we will gain on the roundabouts. At the same time we will have to find enough money to keep the station going. I doubt if people will be prepared to pay higher licence fees unless they can tune in to a station the outlook of which is more in keeping with national aspirations and a better reflection of our national culture and traditions. The station should be such that we would realise it was our own national station and not some pale reflection of a cross-channel station.
Television viewing may become more widespread with the development of piped television. However, this carries a threat to RTE, because in many parts of this city and elsewhere in the country one can receive quite good reception from outside the country. I am informed by those canvassing for piped television that, when it is installed, there will be very good reception from outside stations. I do not know whether or not this is true but, if it is true, I can see RTE facing fierce competition. The people will pay their licences but I doubt if RTE, while collecting the fees, will be entirely happy with the idea that the people who are paying them are not looking at RTE programmes.
Piped television will mean the disappearance of aerials and for this we must be grateful. It will also bring more competition from outside stations We can only hope that in the near future we will see a great improvement in our programmes on both radio and television. It is very tempting to import films and I am told it is a very cheap method of producing a programme. It must be doubly tempting to an authority which has not got all the money it would like to put on first-class programmes. Like all of us the authority must cut its cloth according to its measure. They have to work within their resources. I bewail the fact that we do not have more native drama but I understand this is very costly. With the co-operation of Equity and the theatrical profession generally I think some scheme could be worked out whereby we would have drama twice a week at least. We have many dramatists of our own. We have an occasional drama programme, not as often certainly as we would like.
Last year there was a call for more traditional Irish music. There is a great demand obviously for this type of music. It is not possible, of course, to please everybody but I think the authority will have to stand back and take a serious look at itself to see just where it is going. The figures the Minister gave show an unhealthy development. There has been an enlargement of radio programmes and this is welcomed by housewives and by girls working in offices and factories. Radio has done some good work, but we cannot divorce the two and the authority will have to have a serious look at itself. If it does not do that I predict that we will have an even bigger number of unrenewed licences next year. The number of licences dropped by 40,000. Even deducting those who died or left the country there must be a tremendous number who decided they would not or could not afford the licence fee. There is food for thought in that for Telefís Éireann. If RTE does not face the challenge I can see them receding out of the picture. People will not bother to look at the home-produced programmes. That may sound gloomy but I base my argument on the figures the Minister has given us. These were prepared by the Minister's Department with the co-operation of RTE. I trust the Minister will continue the good work he is doing. Most Deputies will thank the Minister for the grants he has given. This is an innovation. I hope next year there will be more innovations and a better service.
