Vol. 444 No. 5
12 Mr. Gilmore asked the Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht if he will consider amending the Broadcasting Act to allow for the election of representatives of RTE employees to the RTE Authority; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
The RTE Authority has a unique role as custodian on behalf of the people of the national broadcasting services. It has been a long-standing practice that the Government appointed a member of RTE staff to the Authority although serving in a personal capacity. I will consider in the light of the discussions which will follow the publication of the Green Paper the case for continuing the existing arrangements and any alternatives suggested.
For the Deputy's information, I understand from RTE that a committee, composed of elected employee representatives and nominated management personnel, has recently come into operation within RTE, following the recommendations of an internal joint management union working group that had been established last year, under the Worker Participation (State Enterprises) Act, 1988. I am confident this new forum will provide a vehicle to help ensure greater employee participation in the organisation.
The point of the question is to seek to treat all State agencies equally. My understanding is that about 35 State agencies, companies of various kinds, currently have staff elected to their boards. As RTE is an important part of our life, it seems that the fairly large workforce there would have a particular creative input to what is produced by RTE and should have some say on the authority. On that basis I propose that an elected representative of staff should be appointed to the board. I am not too worried as to what device the Minister applies to achieve that, provided the person appointed is representative of the staff as distinct from being plucked out, so to speak, and placed on the board.
In the first instance there is one constraint on the new authority, that since I changed the broadcasting legislation last year, it is the first to have equality legislated for it. If the number of people on the authority is seven, three must be men and three must be women and, if there are nine, there should be four men and four women.
That having been taken into account, I repeat the point I made in my reply. I know what the Deputy is suggesting and I am sympathetic to it. I must also take into account that RTE is not a separate entity or simply an industry; it carries a public broadcasting requirement. For that reason the Government felt it necessary to nominate directly to that authority and then to have a nominee of the staff included. I said I will look at that practice to see what case has been made for it in the past and how it has worked. I will look at the alternatives, including the Deputy's suggestion, when the discussion on the Green Paper turns to the question of structures for RTE. I am always giving dates for which I am hanged afterwards, but I am aiming for publication of the Green Paper — which will become part of the discussion — in September. I will try to see what is the best mechanism.
Will the Minister put it straight into Committee?
