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Joint Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 14 May 2025

Business of Joint Committee

I welcome everyone to their first meeting of the Joint Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport. I am quite conscious that several members are at their first-ever committee meeting. They are especially welcome. Some of us have been around a little longer. We have received no apologies. One or two members are caught at other committee meetings, which often happens at this time, especially when committees are meeting for the first time. The members will come in later.

We have a good bit of housekeeping to get done, in public session and then in private. The first thing I have to do is make the Cathaoirleach's declaration:

I do solemnly declare that I will duly and faithfully, and to the best of my knowledge and ability, execute the office of Cathaoirleach of the Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport without fear or favour, apply the rules as laid down by the House in an impartial and fair manner, maintain order and uphold the rights and privileges of members in accordance with the Constitution and Standing Orders.

I remind members of the constitutional requirement that in order to participate in public meetings, they must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex. Members of the committee attending remotely must do so from within the precincts of Leinster House. We will get back to this. It is due to the constitutional requirement that in order to participate in public meetings, members must be physically present within the confines of the place where the Parliament has chosen to sit. In this regard, I ask any member participating via MS Teams to confirm, prior to making a contribution to the meeting, that they are on the grounds of the Leinster House campus. Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, I will direct them to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that everybody comply with any such direction. I hope such directions are rare.

Let me make some introductory remarks. The members are all very welcome. It is great to have our committee sitting at long last. I am delighted and personally very honoured to be the Chair of this committee. It is a committee I have never served on. It is one of the few, I believe, and I have been a member of a good few of them. The committee covers an area in which I have a great interest, so I am delighted to be chairing it. I look forward to working with each and every one of the members in a genuine spirit of partnership and co-operation and in addressing the very many issues and challenges facing the Department under the remit of this committee. I give my word that I will be as fair and impartial as I can to all members. I served as Vice Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts before, so I am familiar with this role.

I hope our collective endeavours on this committee will inform and support the efforts of the line Minister, Deputy Patrick O'Donovan, and the Minister of State, Deputy McConalogue, in securing Ireland's reputation as a country that truly values and treasures its arts, media, communications, culture and sport at all levels across society. The one thing about this committee is that it is very wide and diverse. There is an awful lot of scope for us to do a huge amount of work. In some cases, issues will pop up from time to time that we are not even considering at the moment. Other issues we will have to consider are fairly obvious. It is very diverse and we can make a lot through that diversity. By doing our work, we can build on the much-celebrated recent successes of artists, filmmakers, musicians and athletes, and also strengthen our media and communications infrastructure. The latter is a component of this committee that we will need to concentrate on.

At this point, before I go into nominations for Leas-Chathaoirleach, I will ask every member to introduce themselves for one minute. I am not yet looking for pitches on what we should speak about. We will talk about that a bit later. Members may introduce themselves and say one or two things they are interested in with respect to the committee. We will start with Deputy Gibney.

I am the Social Democrats TD for Dublin Rathdown and I am delighted to be on the committee. As the Chair said, it is a very wide and diverse one. With regard to my areas of interest, I am particularly interested in misinformation, disinformation and malinformation. I have an overlap with tech, having worked in the tech sector and also formerly as chief commissioner for the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission. I am also interested in gender diversity in all areas but particularly sport, which I know others are interested in as well. They are some of my highlights.

I am an Independent Senator for the National University of Ireland. It is my first time on this committee and I am very glad to be on it and working with members. Areas of particular interest to me that might be connected with this committee in recent years include remuneration issues. With regard to RTÉ, I brought forward Private Members' legislation looking at the issue of keeping control over public service funded salaries and broadcasting. I also have a particular concern - I will wait and see the extent to which the committee is willing to engage on this - that we need strong, enforceable legislation requiring people who provide pornography online to engage in strict age verification practices. That is something we should be taking an interest in with regard to children's welfare and the health of our society. It is certainly an issue I would like to propose for our consideration in whatever way is appropriate in the near future.

I am based in County Louth. Having been a journalist for nearly three decades, I obviously have a keen interest in making sure that the media is well regulated, particularly with respect to defamation and libel laws and moving those into social media as well. I have a great passion for the arts and culture. I look forward to promoting those, particularly in the north-east region. Given the fact that the Louth team is now the Leinster senior football champion and Delaney Cup holder, I look forward to making plenty of hay while the sun is shining on Louth and promoting that sport. I am really looking forward to sitting on this committee.

I am a Senator based in Dublin and from Kilkenny. I was also a journalist and broadcaster. In a previous life, I reported on the workings of this committee. It is the first time for me to sit on any committee, and it is an honour to do so. My obvious areas of interest will be in media and communications, and also in sport, particularly sport governance. I look forward to the work ahead.

I congratulate the Cathaoirleach on his appointment. I am a Sinn Féin TD for Louth, based in Drogheda, which is the largest town in the county and will be the next city of the country. I am delighted to be on this committee. I come to it with various levels of experience. I sat on the board of the Droichead Arts Centre in Drogheda for a number of years and, as I have three degrees in music, I am particularly interested in that aspect. Anybody who knows me knows that my main interest is sport and football, particularly the League of Ireland. I served on the national league committee of the FAI for a number of years and I am currently the only female chairperson of a League of Ireland club, at Drogheda United FC.

I am looking forward to working with everyone. May the work commence.

I am a TD for Dublin South Central. I have been on this committee before and was previously chair of the Irish language committee, Comhchoiste na Gaeilge, na Gaeltachta agus Phobal Labhartha na Gaeilge. I look forward to being on this committee. We are in a very interesting era where there are huge challenges for society with regard to the media but also in the arts, art spaces and how we address art in our communities. The pilot basic income for the arts scheme will end in the coming months and we will have to address that issue. There are several reports to see how it can continue and in what format. There are also obvious challenges for arts organisations and artists themselves with regard to how they can sustain their art.

I congratulate the Cathaoirleach on his appointment and wish him well. I have no doubt he will be very fair in the Chair. As he has extensive knowledge on this subject going back as far as when he appeared with the Nenagh Players, I am quite certain amateur theatre will feature in a big way in our discussions.

Having served on this committee in the previous Oireachtas, I wish to pay tribute to the excellent secretariat. We produced many reports. This is, as the Chair said, quite a broad-ranging committee covering a wide range of issues. The committee gained a little bit of attention during the last term with some minor issues around RTÉ. We had excellent attendances at those meetings. I am certain we will review some of those issues but it is wide-ranging.

I agree with Deputy Ó Snodaigh on the importance of support of artists. We must continue to pursue the basic income scheme for artists.

Our support for minority sports and accessibility for all to sports is critical. As members may be aware, I am Chair of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Artificial Intelligence and there will be a good deal of crossover between the two committees, particularly with regard to our interaction with the social media companies. It will be an exciting and informative committee. We have always worked in a collaborative way and I hope we will continue to do so.

I congratulate the Cathaoirleach on being selected as Chair of this committee. As Deputy Byrne said, it is probably one of the more interesting committees. I look forward to attending and contributing to it.

Prior to becoming a TD, I was a history teacher and have an interest in history, the arts and culture. I also played football at AUL and MSL levels. We actually beat Nenagh AFC in the semi-final of a Munster junior cup back in 2006. Before Coachford won the Munster junior cup this year, we were the last Cork team to win it so we had a competitive interaction with Nenagh on our way to lifting that trophy many years ago.

I look forward to contributing to the committee. As Deputy Byrne said, it is one of the more interesting committees and covers a wide variety of issues. I hope that will keep attendances up.

I thank members for their remarks. As I said earlier, several members will probably come in late. There are several committees meeting at the same time. I thank everyone for their good wishes. I am delighted to be chairing this committee. Google obviously delivered results for Deputy Byrne's history search. My drama and acting skills have probably evolved since I was in the junior section of Nenagh Players. I did not think that would be dug up, to be honest.

I am a sports fanatic. I have a 15-year-old daughter - well, she is 15 next month - who keeps me up to date on everything relating to sport. I used to work on matters relating to media and have a huge interest in that area and, culturally, I have been involved in many different things. I was previously a manager in Fáilte Ireland and that drifts an awful lot into this. I thank and congratulate everybody.

Does Deputy Cleere wish to contribute? Can I confirm he is on the precincts of Leinster House?

We seem to have some issues connecting to Deputy Cleere. We might come back to him.

We move to the nomination of a Leas-Chathaoirleach. Every committee needs a Leas-Chathaoirleach. As members are aware, a committee may choose to elect a Leas-Chathaoirleach who can perform the duties and exercise the authority of the Cathaoirleach in my absence. I propose requesting nominations for the position of Leas-Chathaoirleach. Members might wish to consult one another and send nominations to the clerk by Monday, 19 May. Ideally, I would like the election to take place by next week's meeting. Is that agreed? Agreed.

For Senator Ahearn's information, we just went around the committee members to introduce ourselves and say in one minute what interests we have in this area.

I thank the Chair very much. I have the task of managing two committees at the same time as the committee on foreign affairs is sitting as well. People will experience this over the next few months I am sure.

I congratulate the Chair on his position and wish him well in it. This is a very important committee and I am delighted to see a Tipperary man and a good friend will be covering the role over the next few years. This obviously is a very high-profile committee. There is an awful lot of work that needs to be done on issues that need to be resolved and things we need to ask questions about. I look forward to working with every member of this committee. I am from Tipperary and this is my second term as a Senator.

I thank the Senator. We now need to deal with a range of housekeeping issues I flagged earlier, so with members' agreement we will go into private session.

The joint committee went into private session at 2.17 p.m. and adjourned at 3.04 p.m. until 12.30 p.m. on Wednesday, 21 May 2025.
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