Pat Rabbitte
Ceist:17 Mr. Rabbitte asked the Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht when the promised Green Paper on broadcasting policy will be produced; the general areas it will cover; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
Ceisteanna — Questions. Oral Answers. - Green Paper on Broadcasting Policy.
I would like to refer the Deputy to my reply of 23 February last to questions relating to the production of a Green Paper on broadcasting — columns 482 to 487 of the Official Report — in which I outlined the consultation procedures involved in its preparation and the general areas which it will examine. Work is ongoing on the completion of the paper and, as I indicated to the Select Committee on Social Affairs of this House recently, I hope to be in a position to publish the document in September.
I already welcomed the Minister's proposal to publish a Green Paper. What method of consultation will he put in place to ensure there will be wide public discussion of the published document? Clearly the consultation in the preparation of the Green Paper is likely to have been confined to specialists in the area. I suggest he takes a leaf from his colleague who established the very innovative Convention on Education — perhaps such a forum might be a useful way of having a wider public input to the Green Paper.
I am sure the publication of the Green Paper will be widely welcomed and at least will be the occasion for a good and thorough discussion on broadcasting. Its purpose is to stimulate a wide-ranging and fundamental discussion which will lead to legislation that will bring us to the end of this century and well into the next — broadcasting legislation tends to last a long time. After publication and the usual forms of consultation I will give consideration to other measures, including the one suggested by the Deputy.
The Minister might consider one of the Oireachtas joint committees as a vehicle for such consultation.
I was intrigued by a press report which indicated that an issue to be dealt with in the Green Paper is the possible establishment of a quota system for Irish music. Has the Minister done the impossible and discovered a way of defining Irish music?
I will take the last part of the Deputy's question first. I do not regard it as an unachievable aim to define Irish music. I will come to this issue when I deal with the proposals for the music industry next year and I will not be guided by the press. In reply to several parliamentary questions I said that the issues in broadcasting that must be looked at include what public service broadcasting is in the 1990s; how it has changed from when public service broadcasting was discussed as a central form of broadcasting in easily regulated systems and to take these set of concepts in an area that has been totally changed by technological development, international developments that cross borders, the availability of services and the arrival of commercial services. I have to examine all of these as well as the issue of structures and institutions. In the preparation of the Green Paper I have tried to direct my attention to the lineaments of the field that will be necessary to have a thorough discussion rather than to the detail only. The detailed question the Deputy asked is one to which I can return.
It may well be possible to define Irish music in academic terms but my question relates to broadcasting music and the application of a quota system. For example, would country and western music be classified as Irish music simply because the singer is Irish or——
(Carlow-Kilkenny): And it is produced by Senator Donie Cassidy.
——would traditional Irish music played by a band in America and produced on disc there be classified as Irish music and, therefore, come within the quota? I am not trying to put the Minister on the spot but simply illustrating that a quota system seems to be a totally unworkable approach to the question.
There is no basis for the reports in the newspapers on the quota system, no more than there was for a report by a distinguished predecessor of mine which suggested outrageously in another Sunday newspaper that I interfered in RTE to such an extent that I would approve of all the films commissioned from the independent film sector. That was mischievous, malicious and was recently the subject of an apology in the newspaper concerned.
Nonetheless, the subject raised by Deputy De Rossa may very well be the subject of a summer school which the Minister might organise to peruse that issue which would be very helpful to a serious discussion on the Green Paper when it becomes available ——
I thought Deputy Quill was already committed for the summer and that she had said she would be in the bowels of the National Gallery looking at the paintings.
I am a woman of many parts.