The trouble is that the Minister—and this is not in any way a personal reflection on him; it is perhaps a subjective judgment but it is one garnered from a view and a reading of himself and of what he has stated in many areas of public policy over the past few years or longer—basically, I think, regards us all in this island as little Britons. If I am to go on the reading of what the Minister has said over the years, basically the Minister has a view that there is one way of settling the Irish question and, that is, that we can reintegrate with Britain. It is one way of course of settling the Irish question—reintegrate with Britain, total assimilation with Britain, in every sense of the word, right across the board. Then we can all become little Britons. It is one way of settling the problem. I wonder is it quite the way of settling the Irish question that the majority of Irish people would want were the issue put clearly to them? I do not think it is. This is one way of helping us on the road to being little Britons. It is communication's colonialism; it is nothing more nor less than that. And the Minister is not the type of Minister —if he is there—who will cry halt to that process. His whole attitude and intellectual contribution to Irish public affairs, stimulating I might say in the extreme, would tend to the belief that, once this process had started through BBC 1, it would be allowed continue; that we will gradually and insidiously, all together, slip into being little Britons.
This was not why an independent Irish State was established. It was established for other reasons—to build up the country economically, socially and culturally; to take decisions in our own hands; to make decisions; to act in Ireland's interests, that are often contrary to those of Britain. I am merely quoting one example that comes immediately to mind and to which Senator Martin referred. I happen to know about this in the European Parliament, that is, the direct conflict between Ireland and Britain in the area of, say, common agricultural policy in Europe. That is a point of major public importance as far as we are concerned. It was one of the main reasons why we went into the European Economic Community—to get away from the umbrella of Britain's cheap food policy and to get into the wider dimension of guaranteed prices for farmers within the European umbrella.
The common agricultural policy is constantly under attack at a consistent level throughout the British media. What is not sufficiently understood in this country is well understood by the Minister as an expert on communications. There is no more powerful country in the world when it comes down to public relations and media transmission, at both press and other levels, than Britain. It is the last thing they have from the fallen Empire. They have the best broadcasting system in the world, they have public relations and communications through the press, highly organised through the various press agencies centred in London. Even though a number of their agencies in this area are privately controlled, they all follow consistently the establishment line when it is laid down from the top. It does not matter whether it is a Labour Party in Government or a Conservative Party in Government, once the establishment line in Britain is established that line runs throughout every media controlled basically from the City of London. The Minister is well aware of that.
I come back to my point about the common agricultural policy, which is a fundamental matter as far as we are concerned. If one reads the British newspapers from The Times to The Daily Mirror; if one looks at all the television and radio programmes one will see that day in, day out the message is being hammered home—indeed it was the main point made by the British Prime Minister in the renegotiations in regard to the EEC—is that, “inside Europe, we will abolish the common agricultural policy; inside Europe we will be concerned about cheap food”.
This is the major plank in the British Government's policy in Europe. The Minister for Agriculture is well aware of that. Now, BBC 1 takes part in this gradual erosion and denigration of the common agricultural policy. The establishment word goes out. The British line is: this policy is discredited. This policy leads to waste. This policy must be abolished. We want cheap food for our consumers. This is getting through to Birmingham, Glasgow, London, Belfast, Dublin, Galway and Limerick.
Gradually, the consuming public in Ireland begins to think there is something in this. The question will be asked: why are not the Irish Government supporting the British Government in the interests of the consumer? What is the Irish Government up to in opposing this marvellous plan of the British Government to bring cheap food into every Irish household? No mention is made of the farming interest, the basic interest in regard to our balance of payments arising out of agricultural exports; in the fundamental fact that as far as the Irish State is now constituted economically, we depend for our survival on expanding agricultural exports. If there is one thing that might get the Government out of the horrible economic mess into which they have got themselves at the present time, it is that there is going to be a world shortage of food and we are a food producing country. This must be stimulated to provide us with a proper balance of payments position. The Irish public may begin to think in a dreamlike way, by reason of insidious propaganda from the BBC, that this line of policy which is being adhered to by the present Government and I hope by all responsible Irish Governments in the future, is totally wrong because the BBC said so. All the strong arguments are insidiously put and people begin to think that a major aspect of Irish policy is not defensible. That is just one example on a practical, realistic, present day issue. I could continue right across the board into the far more serious cultural areas to which Senator Martin referred.
The main purpose of the Labour Party and the Conservative Party is to get rid of the common agricultural policy. We will have other allies in that battle in Europe, notably France. French is not read or transmitted here, so the French argument will not come across. What we will have is the British argument. The British argument will be totally opposite to the Irish argument. Here is the Minister handing over the Irish wavelengths to BBC 1 to propagate that British establishment line in regard to that very important matter, the common agricultural policy.
I mentioned that at some length, because it is pertinent to the present situation. It is highly topical at the moment and is likely to become more topical over the next two years. We must ensure that there is no erosion of that policy. One way it could be eroded here is for somebody in London to make the same appeal in our urban areas as can be made in Birmingham or Liverpool, Leeds or Manchester. The basic national interest in regard to stepping up agricultural production, rectifying our balance of payments, lifting up farm incomes, can be totally discounted by BBC insidious propaganda.
There is right across the board, a very real interest in building up an Irish television service that would be complementary in approach. RTE 1 and RTE 2 can be continually monitored by an authority established by Oireachtas Éireann, staffed by an authority appointed by the relevant Minister of the day. This would ensure that we have a broadcasting service which would be in a position to meet the challenge of satellite broadcasting if and when it comes, rather than having a single run-down station that would not be in a position to compete. If there is any creativity or vision in the Minister he will see this situation. This presents a challenge to him, who is an expert in communications, to strive towards the objective of enhancing, enlarging, improving and making the very best use of the space available to us to communicate two complementary channels one of which would contain a large amount of relevant BBC matter related to Irish situations and complementary to other programmes both local and national to be transmitted on one or the other channel.
Far from bringing in this negative restrictive measure the Minister should come to us with a policy on local broadcasting, a policy on broadcasting into the Six County areas where at the present time our channel is practically non-existent outside the counties near the Border. In Belfast, which is the most relevant city for getting our case across, RTE cannot be seen. The Minister may say he cannot do this because of certain conventions dealing with transmission. I would welcome it if the Minister came here with a visionary idea to make sure that there was full local broadcasting into every part of the Six Counties and into Belfast in particular.
I do not see why we are not talking about a booster station in Carlingford which would transmit directly into the City of Belfast and the hinterland around it. The Minister may say there are objections to that. I do not see why we should be raising objections. We are a very small State. We have at our disposal a very small army and a small population and one of our main weapons is our television and radio system. The first task of an Irish Minister of Communication should be to ensure that our radio and television system gets into every Irish home in the Thirty-two Counties. First, our small message, muted beside the big battalions of the BBC, UTV and ITV, is transmitted into every part of Ireland. Second, we should have an efficient. system of local or regional broadcasting Third, we can have two complementary channels which will bring in the best of outside programmes, a large content again of which would come simultaneously and direct from BBC 1.
That is our considered thinking on this matter. It is a view that has been shared by all the Independent Senators. It is a considered and constructive view.
The Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, for a man of his intellectual stature, is adopting an extraordinary restrictive and negative attitude in this matter. You do not need to have an iota of brain to come in here and with a great panoply and fanfare of trumpets, to bring in, in a Second Reading speech, a Bill to retransmit BBC 1. It did not require any great act of genius to decide, as a matter of constructive policy on broadcasting that you simply sit down and decide to rebroadcast BBC 1 from next door. That is what this amounts to. There are other minor improvements that we dealt with otherwise.
Fundamentally this Bill is section 6, this magnificent egg that has been laid after two-and-a-half years of gestation. The egg being laid is that we simply give our transmission facilities to the BBC 1 in London. There has been no attempt to get to the root of the problem, to examine the whole notion of television, the philosophy of television, and how it will fit into the Ireland of the future. We just simply sat down and borrowed the other fellow's television.
I suggest that the Minister, within five minutes of his appointment, sat down and drafted a half-page memorandum to that effect. He then comes here with a Bill embodying the two subsections of section 6. It is a 4-line Bill that could be drafted within a month. We have been waiting two-and-a-half years and the mountain has produced this simple basic thing which could be offered as a solution by anybody in the street. Where is the vision, creativity, sensitivity and responsibility towards the present and the future? Where is the depth of thought? All we get is the simplistic argument that people in the single-channel area do not have it, people in the multi-channel area have it, and therefore the people in the single-channel area must get it. Was any attempt made to diagnose the basic flaw in that argument which says that our proposal in regard RTE 2, in some way means that people in the single-channel area do not get BBC 1? That is not true. The Minister has deliberately befuddled the public into that simplistic view, because undoubtedly what would happen in a complementary situation is that a large proportion of BBC 1 would inevitably be included on the alternative channel.
The important thing is that the Authority, designated by the State, would have control over that channel; be able to monitor it, select programmes, and ensure that there would be balanced overall programme viewing for the Irish viewer. The Minister is well aware of this. He is taking the easy way out without any thought because I suspect he made an indiscreet statement about open broadcasting at a very early stage after his appointment.
Open broadcasting, in the early weeks after the Minister's appointment, became a fetish with him and he committed himself to the situation in which he now finds himself. He is proceeding with it now and ignoring every valid argument by not only Fianna Fáil Senators but by all six university representatives, the trade union movement and all the unions involved in it, and the great majority of thinking people. The Minister will not get away with dealing with thinking people in a simplistic manner. We do not want a simplistic reply from the Minister to this debate. Right through this debate he has sought to corral his proposals and our proposals into a black and white situation. It is not a black and white situation. We have suggested a very real alternative which can be laid on the shoulders of the Authority appointed by the Minister for this purpose.
It is probably fruitless at this late stage to ask the Minister—I ask forgiveness here to go back again to the amendment yesterday—to place this responsibility on the shoulders of his own authority and authorise them to proceed as they think fit with this alternative channel. The whole philosophy and thinking behind establishing a corporation, such as RTE, is that they carry the responsibility for specific matters with which they are charged under law, in the manner that all State agencies operate. The Minister's own State agency in this area apparently is being ignored. He quite calmly said yesterday that they would like this responsibility, they have been restructured under the Minister's control and they are there to carry out this responsibility. Why not leave it to them? Let them get on with the job.
With the opportunity of a second channel to do a complementary job, which would ensure and strengthen our situation in regard to broadcasting and rebroadcasting throughout the whole island, if the Authority was left to handle the job we would have such a broadcasting system on two channels that would meet the needs of people in the single-channel areas by ensuring that they would get the BBC programmes they want. That can be easily assessed on any TAM Rating. All one has to do is take a look at the programmes from BBC 1. One can see straight away the programmes that would and would not appeal to the Irish viewer. The programmes that appeal to the Irish viewer can straightaway go on RTE 2 and the space left by the programmes that would not have any appeal to the Irish viewer would be filled with other programmes on the other channel.
It is so basic and fundamental that the Minister has no case against it. Anyone with any sense of equity and assessment can see that the only people the Minister has brought into the division lobbies against the principle I am now enunciating, are the totally committed whipped supporters of Fine Gael and some of the Labour Party. This House is always a useful forum because of the number of Independents in it. I will say this in fairness to them: in many matters they disagree with us profoundly, both in Government and in Opposition.
