We will now move on to the next item on the agenda which is a discussion with Dr. Maurice Hayes, chairman of the National Forum on Europe. I welcome Dr. Hayes and his colleagues and invite him to make his submission to the committee.
Discussion with National Forum on Europe.
Dr. Maurice Hayes
I introduce my colleagues, Mr. Charles Sheehan, director; Ms Caroline Erskine who deals with our public relations, and Ms Grace O'Regan who is the deputy director. We are very glad to be here and thank the committee for the invitation. I wish the committee well in its work. I know it has been enormously industrious and I do not envy it its job of putting everything together at the end of the day. If there is any help we can give we will do so. If there are any matters we do not manage to cover today and the committee believes we can help we will be glad to do so. I will not take up too much time with introductory remarks. I have sent a short submission which deals with the nuts and bolts of the forum so there is no point in going over that again.
What would be most useful to the committee is to think of the lessons we might have drawn from our work over recent months, particularly in respect of the Lisbon treaty debate. I cannot promise the histrionics the committee had previously but I will give as much information as I can. We have reflected on the issue in the forum and have had the benefit of a presentation on the opinion polls by Professor Richard Sinnott, which this committee had also. More recently, Professor Matt Qvortrup from University College London, spoke about the communication of political ideas. I commend his paper to the committee, a copy of which we can furnish. He posited on who delivered the message to people on the ground. He also drew the conclusion that a referendum was a different process to a general election. It involved selling political ideas rather than people and required different treatment.
A clear issue to emerge from Professor Sinnott's presentation is that Irish people do not have a good understanding of the basic facts of the EU. The last time I was before the committee, Deputy Creighton referred to civic education. At the time I did not have the opportunity to say that I agree with it. I hesitate to load more on schools but there seems to be a gap. There should be more attention to this, not only in respect of Europe but also the Oireachtas and local councils. This is a long-term project.
We must also ponder how people receive this complex political information. I do not subscribe to the theory that there is not enough information. There was plenty but there was so much that people found it difficult to codify it and take it in. I make the distinction between people having full information on a subject, which no one has when it is so complex, and having sufficient information. Those who claimed not to have full information represented a utopian ideal.
We had good relationships with the mainstream media. The Millward Brown poll indicated that people looked first to the traditional broadcasting and print media sources of information. We received excellent coverage in many sections of the media and I can supply the committee with the number of articles, notices and times the forum was mentioned or involved in television programmes. Half-hour programmes on plenary debates were broadcast on community stations around the country, including Inishowen, west Limerick, Connemara and Dundalk.
Local meetings received a positive response from the local media, particularly from local radio. We thought this was an important factor. Apart from the number who came to the meetings, the coverage had a multiplier effect. There was a general practice that local representatives appearing at the meetings were asked to speak on local radio or television the morning before or after. This was useful.
It is difficult to engage the interests of the mainstream media and public opinion generally in EU matters, unless a major issue is pressing or a powerful personality is involved. There was a big difference in the level of interest one could engage when there was no referendum being held and when there was.
We have tracked the level of public awareness of our work on a regular basis. In the 12 months leading up to the referendum, the awareness level of our work jumped to 62%, compared to a figure of between 35% and 38% the previous year. Of the 62% who had heard of the forum, more than half said it had improved their understanding and appreciation of European issues. One very odd figure appeared. Every poll showed that 20% said they had improved their knowledge until the very last one which was taken shortly before the referendum when the figure fell to 10%. I do not know why it dropped. It may be that this was the fashionable thing to say at the time.
In addition to the media coverage of debates and activities, during the years the forum has produced a series of informational documents and audiovisual material in various formats. These include materials to support our schools' public speaking competition, a guide for Irish women and some videos and DVDs which seek to show the workings of the European Union to an Irish audience. We also produced impartial material on the Lisbon treaty. A total of 45,000 copies of the summary guide have been taken up in one form or another. It was generally well received as a fair presentation of the issues involved. We have also used the emerging Internet-based media; this is becoming a more interesting area. I was struck by the Presidential debate in France and the use of the Internet and blogs below the normal media radar. It would be worth the sub-committee's while to look at the progress of the Obama campaign in America to see how people used new forms of media, both for fund-raising and communication — perhaps not so much for communication as engagement and making people feel part of the debate.
Our website offers a wide range of new media such as podcasts of all public meetings. We have a dedicated YouTube channel which was a particularly successful interactive feature but it depended on the members of the forum, including members of the sub-committee, who recorded video footage for the channel, for which I am very grateful to them. We continue to have over 230,000 hits or visits to the site. This is almost an understatement of the importance of the Internet because users may have exceptional influence.
I refer to a presentation outlining concepts about how people receive ideas and the argument that they receive them from opinion formers whom they trust and they tend not to be the people — this is not intended to be recriminatory — we think they might be. They tend not to be politicians or the newspapers; rather they tend to be individuals. The argument is that one must try to identify and get through to them to get them engaged in the project. This view is supported by a section of the Millward Brown poll which indicates that apart from the traditional media, it was family and friends who were the most important. These opinion formers are the people we should be looking after.
I was interested in how the result of the Lisbon treaty referendum became stratified and regionalised. One is seeing a movement towards this for the first time in Irish politics on such a broad issue. When the National Forum for Europe started off after the first Nice treaty referendum, it conducted a survey of those who had not voted. They fell into four main groups — farmers, young people, women and blue-collar workers. Despite all the work done, not just by the forum but by every other political body, these four groups are still the least engaged with Europe.
I thank Dr. Hayes for his ongoing communication with the sub-committee and the Joint Committee on European Affairs. As a former member of the National Forum on Europe, I may be somewhat biased but I must acknowledge the tremendous work he has done since the rejection of the Nice treaty. I also acknowledge his work in bringing the message to communities. The comments on engagement with local media were helpful. It would be interesting to examine the referendum results in areas where the forum held meetings. In County Clare — in another forum I may take credit myself for canvassing actively — the forum had briefing sessions in Ennis which had a wide take-up with the local media. Clare was the only county in the west to pass the referendum. To some extent, we can share some kudos in that.
Dr. Maurice Hayes
I could offer a counter-analysis to that.
I am sure of that but we will pass on it.
I welcome the delegation and thank Dr. Hayes for his presentation. The forum was established in 2001 but seven years on, despite all its work, debates and liaison with groups across the country, it is the same four groups that remain disengaged. Why is this? What can be done to address this? In 2007, the forum particularly targeted women's groups. Women's groups tend to be well organised, particularly in rural areas, yet women in rural areas largely voted "No".
Dr. Maurice Hayes
Yes, that is right. The forum engaged with women's groups such as the Irish Countrywomen's Association and held three separate meetings for women. While we got them into a meeting about Europe, it was very difficult to get them to talk about it. Instead they talked about local hospital services, transport and other matters.
Again, the forum engaged with the farming groups. However, particular reasons which ran through all the meetings the forum held affected the farmers' vote. One issue which arose was with fishermen who were feeling the pinch very badly.
Young people are also a different matter. The forum has a schools competition for the transition year with up to 170 schools taking part. A generation of young people is growing up which cannot remember Ireland not being in Europe or being poor. They find it very hard to make the connection. We did the schools competition with the help of the MEPs, which did beef things up considerably in recent years. They were very active in dealing with this. For all groups there is a necessity to help people make a connection between Europe and what is going on in their lives. We have all signally failed to do that.
How did the forum interact with the media? Did it meet, for example, with editors of local newspapers——
Dr. Maurice Hayes
Yes.
——and with regional radio stations, which, in the west, where there was a particularly bad result, get 60% to 70% listenership? I found from my own experience with Midwest Radio that it did not take up the Lisbon debate but shied away from it. Little debate actually took place on that radio station. That is the station that the vast majority of people in County Mayo, for example, listen to. Did the forum meet the manager of the station?
Dr. Maurice Hayes
I might ask Ms Erskine to deal with that in a minute.
From time to time I meet the main editors and news editors, and, in particular, the political and European correspondents. The national newspapers tend to be driven by news values and unless there is a story in it or it is a big thing it is very difficult to get them — apart from The Irish Times — to provide space. We found with our meetings that it depended on the person we brought in. If we brought in Chris Patten or José Manuel Barroso there would be coverage. It seems to me the same thing is happening with this committee. When I look at today’s paper and the newspapers from other days it seems the committee’s visitor yesterday attracted rather more attention.
Ms Caroline Erskine
We did not find much difficulty in placing our speakers on local radio because, paradoxically, the stations are not interested in people being parachuted in to discuss issues. They wanted to talk to local politicians. We had very little problem placing speakers, in advance of each meeting, on the local morning shows. We developed a very strong relationship with the producers of the local morning shows. In addition, we got in touch with the news editor on the day and hoped to get a clip of the chairman saying that the forum would come to town the following day. Our relationship with the local media was quite strong and we got a great deal of coverage from them.
I appreciate the difficulty of trying to get something into the national media in terms of getting it past the editor and whether it is newsworthy, but obviously the local media would be hungry for stories. In the print media I found that to be the case, but not with the local radio stations. Every local radio station — I am speaking in particular about my own area — has a main show that operates every day between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. There was the odd thing, but throughout the campaign there was no ongoing debate on Lisbon that took place every week. I felt there was reluctance to discuss it. I do not say it was the same throughout the country, but I refer specifically to my own local radio station. This is something to be conscious of because it is so influential and has such a large listenership. If we ever find ourselves in this situation again we will have to focus on this.
Dr. Hayes spoke about whether one should provide full information or sufficient information for a person to make up his or her mind. With a treaty the size of the Lisbon treaty and as technical as it is, to provide the average voter with full information is probably unrealistic. However, I noticed for the first time ever during the Lisbon debate a focus on the issue of reading the entire treaty. At the time of the Nice referendum nobody ever asked whether one had read the Nice treaty from start to finish. However, one was almost embarrassed if one had not read this treaty. As a result, when contributing to debates, one felt one had to have full knowledge. This may be why people were expecting to know more and more in the public domain. Was the idea of everyone having full information ever practical? Ultimately, if they had sufficient information to make an informed decision, would that not be the key?
Dr. Maurice Hayes
If anybody told me they had full information, I really would not believe them.
One would think they were mad in the head.
Dr. Maurice Hayes
It was a mantra that all the information had to be available. One does not need full information. For instance, I sign for insurance, rent and telephones and find to my cost when I get home that they are not what I thought they were. The difficulty is that if one is to have sufficient information, it needs to be delivered by somebody whom people believe. In the old days, in the Utopian past, it would have been delivered by the parish priest, teacher or doctor. That is the problem we are facing, to find who the authority figures are in society. We had thought there was a possibility we could bring in a legal expert to give an independent view or explanation but it was not possible to have that expert because somebody else brought in another expert who had a contradictory view. In the case of referenda in general, not just in this one, it is necessary to find a way of boiling the issue down to the essentials, leaving it to the Oireachtas to work out the nuts and bolts. It was an impossible ambition to achieve that people would read and understand all the informtion.
I welcome Dr. Hayes and the members of the forum. If I have learned one thing in recent weeks, it is that the task of engaging with the public is the kernel of the issue. I agree with Dr. Hayes that there was lots of information available, even though it was maintained there was not enough. It was a case of there being less knowledge than information but virtually nil interest in accessing knowledge or information. That is a barrier that is very difficult to overcome. I am not on the defensive but some submissions referred to there being an onus on politicians to engage with the public. However, the only way we can engage is through the conduit of the broadcast and print media. In the months before the referendum The Irish Times carried articles and opinion pieces on the Lisbon treaty but most of the other newspapers did not do this until the very end of the campaign. I do not wish to speak in advance of Mr. Colleran’s appearance before the sub-committee today. His newspaper, the Irish Daily Star, may have carried the headline, “If you don’t know, don’t vote” or “Vote No”. Does Dr. Hayes agree there is an onus on the editor of a newspaper to read the document and then be in a position to explain it to readers? Politicians on the “Yes” side outlined what they believed to be the facts, based on documentary information, yet there was a failure on the part of many sections of the media to carry this.
I acknowledge the excellent work done by Dr. Hayes. I know he has been criticised by the Joint Committee on European Affairs but based on my experience in the past six or seven weeks, he has a most difficult job to do. He was a lightning rod for much publicity about the European Union and the Lisbon treaty and organised many high profile speakers, which is to his credit. It is not his fault that the information might not have been disseminated to the grassroots, as that is everyone's task. He referred to the cohort groups and may have referred to a regional trend. I think he is the first witness to refer to this regional trend but I may be misinterpreting him. It is a fact that there was such a trend, particularly along the western seaboard, with the exception of County Clare. I ask him for his view on this.
I want to talk about the influence of the British media on the issue in Ireland. There is an article by Sarah Carey in today's edition of The Irish Times under the headline “Don’t let Rupert Murdoch decide Ireland’s future”. I find this matter disturbing. It is argued that The Irish Times is very pro-European Union and pushing this agenda but my complaint is that it allowed factually inaccurate opinion pieces to be printed during the campaign. In fairness to that publication, it allowed opinion pieces and letters that gave another view. Ms Carey points out that the editor of the Irish edition of The Sunday Times, Mr. Frank Fitzgibbon, told her that not only could she not write a pro-treaty column for that newspaper but no other writer could either. “Freedom of the press” is a great catchphrase and I can understand media owners may have an agenda but if they do, the onus is on them to make it clear. If journalists have the courage of their convictions, they should let this be known through the newspapers. It would be helpful, even at this late stage, if the sub-committee could get Mr. Fitzgibbon to attend because it may not be fair to pillory him and his newspaper in his absence. We only have a few meetings left and I am not sure if he is due to attend but I would love to ask him whether it is true that he considered putting both sides of the argument in his newspaper but received a direction from on high insisting he not do so. Where does this leave freedom of the press because many potentially affected journalists appeared in the broadcast media in the course of the campaign masquerading as independent observers? It appears they were not independent. I find this disturbing.
I represent Fine Gael and people know what we stand for; we wear our hearts on our sleeves. I find elements which are not up-front disturbing. Based on his many years of experience dealing with the British and Irish Administrations, can Dr. Hayes give us his view on the British controlled tabloid media, although The Sunday Times may not be considered a tabloid? Has Dr. Hayes read the article? If so, does he have a view on it?
Dr. Maurice Hayes
My many years of experience in various administrative jobs tell me I should leave this matter until the next session of the sub-committee. The matter should be discussed with the representatives of the newspapers. I do not want to comment on it for many reasons, if the sub-committee members do not mind. One of the reasons I could not write about it is I was chairman of the National Forum on Europe; equally, I would not wish to comment, except in the most general terms, on what newspapers do. Newspapers have different methods. The question relates to another: how much does the debate in Britain spill into Ireland through the British media? Is the British media presence in Ireland used by British Eurosceptics as a surrogate for the debate on the referendum which did not take place there and which some of them had hoped for? There is a degree of seepage. People who are trying to influence public opinion need to be aware of the fact that this body of opinion is forming.
There is a comment I would like to make. As politicians, we often feel vulnerable to claims that we are trying to dictate to the media and suppress freedom of the press when we raise these issues. However, we raise them in the hope there is freedom of the press. It is possible that readers who question this article will believe it is trying to suppress freedom of the press by questioning the editor of The Sunday Times.
Dr. Maurice Hayes
One hopes newspapers believe it is a matter of public policy to debate issues openly and give reasonable space to contrary opinions. At the same time, there is nothing to stop a newspaper having an editorial line. Newspapers take a different editorial line, not only on the European Union but on other matters and, by and large, their readers are aware of this. More sophisticated readers will make allowances for it.
Thank you, Dr. Hayes. We have a module at 2 p.m. dealing with this. Various invitees from the press group will attend. Unfortunately, Mr. Fitzgibbon has indicated to the committee that he will not be able to attend but that Mr. Frank Cullen of National Newspapers of Ireland will be a broad representative. Perhaps we can follow that dialogue at that stage.
I welcome Dr. Hayes and his colleagues from the National Forum on Europe. I very much appreciate the work done at the national forum since it was established in 2001. The purpose of establishing it was to fill a deficit that existed at the time of the Nice treaty, to engage in debate with and disseminate information to citizens. Has any other country in Europe followed that model? Yesterday Mr. Richard Sinnott indicated that in terms of knowledge of European matters and European institutions, Ireland was in the bottom half of the league table. That was somewhat surprising because Ireland has probably done more than most to try to inform the public. We have had referendums on every treaty, which very few other countries have done. The issue of Europe is live at least every few years in a major way. There is plenty of information. Nevertheless, we are well behind, certainly behind all the Nordic countries in terms of what our citizens know about Europe.
I am not sure I would agree with Deputy Timmins that The Irish Times fully favoured the “Yes” side. Mr. Vincent Browne wrote an article today which is against. Mr. Ganley seems to have got very positive treatment following the proceedings here yesterday, although his performance was very poor. Nevertheless, the perception is that Mr. Ganley had a brainstormer and was very strong. I believe The Irish Times was the only paper that dealt with the issues seriously from beginning to end throughout the campaign. It provided opinion pieces on both sides and coverage right through. It is still providing very strong and, in most cases, balanced coverage. The British media appears to be campaigning against the Europe and reflects quite a strident conservative view. The tabloids only use it for a bit of colour from time to time when it suits them. There is no doubt that media coverage of the European Union is very patchy apart from The Irish Times.
In terms of the forum's fundamental operations during the referendum campaign on the treaty, would it have done things differently if it were doing them again? It seems that proceedings regarding the Lisbon treaty did not work well at the forum. I am a member of the forum and attended all the meetings and it seemed that the discussions were somewhat sterile and repetitive with a great deal of grandstanding and point scoring. The same happens here when the MEPs turn up at this committee; there is a fair amount of grandstanding and they are gone again. Would it not have been better if the forum had broken down into workshops to examine serious controversial issues such as taxation, conscription, workers' rights and the sensitive social issues raised by the religious organisations? The forum could have extracted or abstracted those issues and got teams to work on those within the pillars of the forum. We were left with a complex document, unintelligible to most people. The forum did a fantastic summary, which was the best summary. In practice, the proceedings of the forum in Dublin, as distinct from the public and sectoral meetings that took place, did not contribute much to knowledge. Each side got stuck in the bunkers and that was the way it was from beginning to end. Has the forum had a review of how it might conduct a treaty referendum debate in future?
My final point concerns education, on which the forum does great work in schools, and public speaking. Civic education called CSPE takes place in schools. Is the curriculum the problem? Is it what Mr. Halligan suggested, which is the absence of teaching history now?
Dr. Maurice Hayes
Is that an exam subject?
CSPE is an exam subject at junior certificate level. The opportunity also exists at transition year. CSPE is taught the year before and transition year is an opportunity to engage in matters outside the curriculum. The opportunity is there. Maybe it is a case of filling the opportunity with appropriate material and suggestions for the curriculum. Work is being done on that.
Yesterday, we heard that there is an absence of history being taught. Teaching of history has been greatly reduced within the school system. People do not have a context for Irish political and democratic institutions or European democratic institutions. This means that any information does not have any backdrop and is lost in many cases.
Dr. Maurice Hayes
The short answer to the questions on whether we would do it differently is that we would, which I will speak more on shortly. Other countries do not have a forum, it is unique to the extent that it has created much interest. I have been asked to talk to people in other countries and to the European Parliament. The French had a body for the last referendum but it was more grandiose. It did not have the pattern of public meetings.
One matter to consider is whether there is need for an intermediate body to help to engage ordinary people in the European thing. The workshop approach is a way to tackle this and we might have approached it this way. It requires some rejigging and the parties to the forum being willing to rejig. When one is chairman, one is aware of the fact that there is a pecking order in parties and that some parties are bigger than others. There is a particular problem within the structure of the forum. The observer pillar is not represented on the steering committee but is disparate with people who are Eurosceptics and others who are very strong Europeans. There is a wide range and it is very difficult to produce one voice. We organised a couple of workshops recently and they were extremely good. It would be foolish not to take cogniscence of what went on and see what did and did not work.
I was somewhat disappointed with the local meetings. We thought there would have been more engagement by local party apparatus and local councillors but they tended not to become engaged. This meant a preponderance of Eurosceptic voices at the meetings. If I were to take a poll on this basis and the number who spoke, the "No" vote would have been preponderant.
On the teaching of history in schools, I am very reluctant to push material into schools because no matter what the social problem is there is pressure for a course on road safety, child rearing, health and alcohol and the rest. I am sure the teachers do not want to have something else imposed on them. There is a basic need to think in terms of civic or moral education. There needs to be a basic set of values and some understanding of the world and how students can expect and hope to influence it. This requires a general acquaintance at least with government and citizenship. The teaching of history is a problem and in a sense is being pushed out by other subjects. Even the notion we had of history as being a series of chronological events seems to be dying out.
The forum has done as much as it thought necessary by way of producing films and videos for schools which can be used as basic material. There is a total of 180 out of approximately 600 schools.
I note the forum holds a schools debating competition for transition year students. What about preparing a CSPE, civic, social and political education, module? It could be a module on the European Union.
Dr. Maurice Hayes
We would be very happy to look at that suggestion. Mr. Territt was here this morning. The European Union office and the European Parliament office in Dublin have been extremely co-operative and helpful. The award for the winning schools is a tour of the European institutions. We will take the Deputy's suggestion on board, with the European Union office. We have an advisory group of educational advisers and will discuss it with that group. It is the sort of action we could take.
I have a briefing note on our experience in dealing with the press which I will leave with the sub-committee.
I thank Dr. Hayes and the National Forum on Europe for assisting the sub-committee in its deliberations. I also thank the forum for its ongoing work and acknowledge the tremendous impact it has had in bringing the debate on the European Union to the widest possible audience. I am taken by Dr. Hayes's comment that while it is not always possible to have a good attendance at forum meetings, the impact it has had in accessing local and regional media has been impressive. I compliment and congratulate the forum on this.
Sitting suspended at 11.25 a.m and resumed at 11.35 a.m.