Or reduced. The Minister for Posts and Telegraphs must also approve any extension of our allocation of time for broadcasting generally. Senator O'Reilly from Long-ford seems to have a misconception on the question of advertising. He seems to think that entire programmes are sold to some outside bodies. That is not so and I do not think it is necessary to point it out to most Senators who already understand it. The time is sold simply to cover a specific advertisement and the part of the programme may be selected by the advertiser, allocated to him, and prices differ depending on the time. Some advertisers want time allocated to them when the TAM rating is highest and the cost to them is accordingly higher. This is all a matter for the Authority and there is no question of selling entire programmes and letting the advertisers concerned insert their notices wherever and whenever they choose. Ten per cent of the time is the period allowed to be occupied by commercials at a rate of not more than 7½ minutes in any one hour of broadcasting. That is how it stands at the moment. Telefís Éireann's time in this respect is fully allocated. The demand is greater than the time available— there is a queue, if you like.
That brings me to the point of commenting on various suggestions about advertising tobacco and drink. The smoking commercials were mentioned in the Dáil but I do not think there was any reference there to drink. It is a very big question, not as simple as one might think. In Britain, television cigarette advertising is prohibited. It is not, however, prohibited in the Press, on hoardings, in magazines or in the various other media. This, to my mind, makes nonsense of the objections to advertising these things on television.
One Senator said it was remarkable that the Minister for Health should be pointing out the dangers of cigarette smoking while the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs was asking people to smoke. When a particular section of a newspaper is bought for advertising, it does not mean that the newspaper is advocating the use of the product so advertised. Senator Sheehy Skeffington pointed out that his father prohibited advertising in a paper he produced. That would be exceptional. If advertisements appear on television, it does not mean the Minister wishes everyone to use all the products advertised. The advertisers buy the time to promote the sales of their products and it does not necessarily follow that I, the Government, the Dáil or the Seanad approve of any of these products.
Some people seem to think—I should like to believe it is correct—that the efficacy of such advertising on television is completely out of this world in the impact it has on the viewing public. I am sure the people advertising on television will be glad to hear of the trend of the debate here. We seem to think television advertising has an almost compelling appeal. I do not agree. I do not think people regard television advertising in that all-important way. Admittedly, it has a great amount of success.
However, the matter of cigarette advertising will sooner or later have to be tackled in a definite way. There are regulations laid down already as to the way in which these advertisements may be presented. Advertisements of cigarettes, tobacco, beer and spirits, are not generally shown before 7.30 p.m. The manner in which these advertisements may be shown is covered by a code of regulations. The question of whether we may treat beer and spirits advertising in the same way as we may have to deal with smoking advertising is a totally different matter. I have the greatest possible sympathy for the brewers and distillers because they seem to be people from whom everybody wants to get money and to whom nobody wants to give anything. The farmers want to grow barley for them and the Revenue Commissioners want to get money from them.
We have had people posing as defenders of the country's morals. We must have a modest, reasonable outlook towards this matter. It has been said this may lead to an increase in the consumption of intoxicating drink in this country. In fact there has been a decline in drunkenness. Moderation is practised to a much greater extent than ever before and this is an important factor. To my mind, the position was much more serious when we had far more of what is known as secretive drinking. That was much more dangerous. One must tread very lightly in this respect. It is very easy to get up and pose as a magnaminous character deeply concerned about the wellbeing and morals of everybody. It is so easy to do that. I feel that one must use some sound reason and judgement and commonsense in these matters. Since the Marriage Feast of Cana, people have been enjoying a drink, and long before it. A person who can in moderation enjoy one does very often see the best of life. A person who cannot take it without being drunk should not use it at all. Such people should have Pioneer pins.
That, I think, pretty well sums up what the position is with regard to intoxicating liquor. It is a matter like everything else in which the important word "moderation" applies, as in so many things. I am not going to say or to give this House the impression that I think one will allow a medium, either sound or television, so far as it lies in my power to prevent it to be wrongly used to in any way spread the dangers of drink. I am sure that I am as conscious and the Authority are as conscious as anybody here of the dangers inherent in allowing this sort of thing to go too far. We do get occasional complaints about young girls being shown in advertisements, and this is something which the Authority are already aware of. I am sure they will be capable of taking the necessary action if they feel that at any time the danger line in that respect has been reached.
I do not want to go any further except to say that I do not anticipate any serious action being taken against the advertisers of intoxicating drinks. I want to assure the House that this thing will not be allowed to get out of hand. It does turn up a fair amount of money in advertising but that is not just the reason why anybody would be slow to abandon this advertising as of now. The figures are much higher than those, incidentally, which the speakers have been quoting. I will give the correct figures. This is a question of whether we should discriminate against producers of particular products on one of the advertising media available to them or go all out and not allow them to advertise in the press or any other media available. If we prohibit the advertising on one medium, we should do it on the entire media available.
Drink produced last year in advertising revenue £184,000. That showed an increase of £40,000 on the previous year. Cigarettes produced £176,000 which is £7,000 less than the previous year. This comes about as a result of competition. Somebody said that the distillers or the brewers would feel happy if they were precluded in the morning from using this advertising medium. Perhaps they would, but they would concentrate anew on some other medium and use more money in advertising elsewhere. I do not think that really is the answer. People who say that you can have a product on the market without advertising are talking nonsense. Senator O'Reilly was one of those who said that he did not like advertising at all and that there was something suspicious about it. I am afraid that all these salesmen and the best sales psychologists in the world are perfectly well aware that products only hold the market in proportion to the manner in which they are advertised consistently.
Before I run over the other speakers' views, I should like to mention the general trend of the programmes. I am responsible for seeing that the provisions of section 17 are observed by the Authority. I have mentioned this usually when I have had occasion to speak. Senator Garret FitzGerald, when he spoke as the first speaker here, seemed to cast some doubt and ambiguity on the whole wisdom or the actual provisions of section 17, which states that the Authority are obliged to bear constantly in mind the national aims of restoring the national language. He questioned as to who was capable of stating what the national aims were. I think that he was being rather naive when he dealt with that. Nobody has any doubt in his mind as to what that section actually means and refers to.
This section and this pamphlet which Senator FitzGerald referred to and from which Senator Ó Maoláin quoted are very important. I do not want to be always harping on this, but we need not have any television in this country at all if we are prepared to emulate the type of television programme transmitted from other stations. We could have the necessary apparatus to ensure that we receive programmes from those stations properly. In many parts of the country we do receive them. In County Donegal where I live, I can have UTV, BBC or Radio-Telefís Éireann. We could have transposers erected to bring in other television. We need not have television of our own if we were prepared to do that but we ought to have what is distinctively our own television. We have a culture of our own; we have our own way of life, if not completely devoid of vulgarity. Some people seem to think that we must portray the stage Irishman type. I do not think that this is essential at all. I do not think that that comes into it.
We can have the most beautiful programmes flavoured with the real Irish culture and the Irish image. This need not be a language programme every minute of the day. I am not in favour of those who think that you can have a crash language revival programme on television and at the same time, get all the people to view it. You have to make a programme interesting. You have to get it to them in a gradual manner in which you will cultivate an interest in the language, I do not agree with those speakers who said that "Labhair Gaeilge Linn" was not an interesting or useful programme. I think it is excellent. Some of the programmes made bilingually are most useful and they assist people who may not be fluent speakers. The Irish language programmes are great for people with a firm knowledge of the language such as native speakers. But these may attract the interest even of those who are opposed to it—and they are quite a few—and this should be the type of easy way in many of our programmes. I am all in favour of the announcers opening up with Irish and using a bit of the language whenever it is possible, even in announcing programmes entirely — films produced from abroad or anywhere where they can be announced in Irish and very often are. They mostly are now, and this is very good.
The overall effect of section 17 is something which we can measure tangibly in the amount of space allocated as years go on to the different types of programme. A careful scrutiny of the overall allocation of time will show that the Authority is making a serious effort to live up to their obligations in that respect. Certainly the members are aware of their responsibilities, because I have occasion frequently to sit down and discuss with them and I can assure the House that as a body of nine people with Mr. Andrews as Chairman, they are very well alive to the requirements and to the proper image that they think collectively television should have in this country.
We have had some 18 or 19 speakers here, all of whom gave their personal views on the type of programmes they would like. They undertook to criticise the programmes which they had been viewing from time to time. They advocated the different type of programmes they would like. I would say that if one took a careful analysis of the desires and views of the entire speakers one would find great difficulty in producing a programme that would suit even this Chamber. All we can do is speak for ourselves, each one as an individual. That is all I can do. I am not going to say whether anyone is right or wrong when they claim a certain programme is right or wrong. I might only be giving my individual view. Perhaps I might be doing a little bit better than that because in the few months I have been Minister, I have tried, as a matter of obligation, to interpret all the views, look objectively at this whole thing and get as many people's views as possible in the entire country. For that reason, perhaps I have got a kind of TAM rating of my own. My view would be a lot different to what it was a year ago because I feel obliged to take an objective view the whole time and I try to assess for myself what are the views of a cross section of the people.
The Authority have a much better means. They have the TAM rating system. This brings us down to the basic facts of this whole question of programming. Senator Sheehy Skeffington was perfectly right when he quoted George Bernard Shaw and said: "Do not give them what they want, give them what is good for them". It is not always correct to give them what they want. It could be very simple to give them what they want and be guided by TAM rating entirely. In fact, we would have the Late Late Show the whole day, to take the extreme view.
The RTE Authority have an obligation. As you know, there are three high objectives set by all television media throughout the world. Those are to educate, to inform and to entertain. Those three very high objectives which were so much stressed in the Pilkington Report on broadcasting are not so easy of achievement when you are dealing with a medium depending on commercials for its revenue and when you are dealing with a medium which is in competition with a couple of other stations. One has to give way very often but those are the objectives towards which the Authority strives and will keep striving towards, to educate, to inform and to entertain. This could possibly be done all in one programme but very often to do any one entirely requires separate treatment, if you like. It is not always possible just to have the type of thing you would like the people to get, particularly in the matter of education. It is not always possible to give them the thing you would like to give them just because you are depending on the revenue from advertising, which is entirely controlled by the TAM rating of your programme. Very often, unfortunately, if you give them the thing that you might regard as being for the greatest good, the viewing public would be very small.
I was asked in that context, to let you know what the top three TAM ratings are. They are "Tolka Row""The Late Late Show" and "Quicksilver". There are a few other close runners such as "The Virginian". Those are very often some of the programmes we get mostly criticised but those are the top ratings. It is interesting that the programmes about which we get the most complaints are very often the ones that are viewed by the greatest number of people. That is only logical. Very often the programmes that are most condemned are viewed by the greatest number of people.
I am not going to be dragged into the question of the quality of any of the shows that have recently been the subject of criticism but I should like to say this in defence of the people producing the programmes. I think that from the moral point of view their programmes compare favourably with any transmissions in the world. The occasional lapses that occur are ununavoidable if you want to have a live and open show. This is the exception which goes to prove that those things occur infrequently. We do not want them to occur at all but we are prepared to accept they are unavoidable under certain circumstances. This is bound to happen in a programme, such as the one that has been mentioned, an open live programme where people are apt to say anything.
It is not always easy, and the fact that those things occur so seldom is in itself a very high tribute to the overall presentation. I think nobody need have any serious worry about how the medium will develop in that respect. We have people in charge of it who are capable of ensuring that they will keep on to the line. I have no doubt they will be frequently reminded if they deviate from the straight and narrow for one moment. This is good. That is the reason why I was glad there was so much criticism in this House because in the Dáil I was afraid because everybody had been so satisfied with the whole conduct of the two media that the Authority would be lulled into a sense of complacency and think they were really the tops. There is nothing like always striving to be better. I think most Senators here started off saying television is not a bad medium at all, that it has been a great success but they would like to do this. Of course, they went on with all those requests. I could not possibly go into all of them in the time at my disposal. I should like to say, as I said at the start, that they will be on the record and I am sure the Authority and everybody concerned, right down to the assistant producer in different programmes, will read them and will study them. I hope they will be of immense value to them.
The Authority get those complaints from various people throughout the country but I am sure this debate will be of interest to them. I have already dealt with Senator FitzGerald's interpretation of section 17 with which I do not agree. He referred to section 18 also where he seemed to fear the Authority were interpreting that too strictly with regard to the balancing of political broadcasts. I do not know about that. When I was the Chief Whip of the Government Party, we used to meet the Controller in conjunction with the Whip of the Fine Gael Party and the Whip of the Labour Party. We used to work out an agreed system for political broadcasts. I am sure that is still possible. I do not know if it is still continued but certainly, before the election, we had a series of political broadcasts where we agreed with the Controller of Programmes on the balance that would be given.
Senator McQuillan, Senator FitzGerald and Senator O'Quigley condemned the method of interviewing and they also condemned the interviewers. We had a few Senators who afterwards came along and had a few nice words to say about the interviewer. I think what they were complaining about was that when some members of the Fianna Fáil Government come back from abroad on occasions, they are not confronted by people who would have a really hard and controversial interview with them and say——