The question I asked the Department of Public Enterprise is in three parts: how many licences Cable Management Ireland applied for before the closing date for receipt of applications on 31 August 1989; what licences it was allocated on foot of those applications and under what circumstances it was granted the three licences for County Donegal in 1990, as the closing date for receipt of applications on 31 August 1989 passed without any applicants for the three licences in Donegal.
I am concerned about this issue in view of what has happened in the past and the many doubts concerning the validity of existing licences due to the large number of issues which have arisen in the past few months, especially those which arose within the past month. Certain tactics are being used in Donegal by this company to put community deflector groups and their systems off the air. Digital television will be introduced in the next 18 months and there is a need for the broadcasting policy of the Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands to be established as quickly as possible in view of the fact that MMDS franchise licence holders have every intention of applying for the licence to provide digital reception through MMDS and cable television.
I have taken part in debates on the future provision of digital television at the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Heritage and the Irish Language. I also attended joint Oireachtas committee meetings which discussed the problems of mobile telephone communication masts in rural communities. The knowledge and information I have acquired from the work of both committees has caused me to question the granting of the original MMDS licences in Donegal and the possibility of the same difficulties we have experienced over the past nine years continuing with the introduction of digital television.
The people of Donegal felt that the introduction of digital television would be their saviour and bring an end to years of confrontation and disruption. A number of facts which have arisen in the past few months have disturbed me and many of my constituents: the ongoing question of the Rennicks political contributions at the time of the granting of the MMDS licences; the absence of applications for the three Donegal MMDS licences before the closing date on 31 August 1989 and how was Cable Management Ireland granted the licences in 1990.
At the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Heritage and the Irish Language, I asked the representatives of another MMDS franchise company why they had not applied for the Donegal licences. They replied by quoting a Department official who stated that companies wishing to get oranges would also have to take some lemons. That company's lemon was the south of the country. No one wanted the lemons in the north-west. The north-west lemon was not only commercially non-viable but, due to the number of local community deflector groups which had developed from the mid 1970s to the late 1980s, there was going to be a lot of aggravation and disputes.
One must wonder how between August 1989 and late 1990 it was made more enticing for CMI Ireland to take up the Donegal licences? No great effort has been made by this company to introduce MMDS services to west Donegal. Initially there was opposition to its gaining access to the site on which the Telecom Éireann mast is situated at Ardragh. However, it gained access following legal proceedings.
In the past year the company has made no great marketing effort to sell its services to the people of south-west Donegal other than the threat of legal proceedings against landowners on whose land the deflector groups have situated their equipment. It has tried to bully the people of Ardragh and Glenties into taking its service by taking both community groups to the High Court. It has succeeded in silencing the community service in Glenties. The legal action against the Ardragh community group has been postponed to enable the company to examine the group's claim that it does not need a licence under existing legislation.
CMI Ireland examined the local system in Ardragh in the last week and has to decide within the next two weeks whether to proceed with its legal action. The company has tried to bully the populated areas of Ardragh and Glenties which are adjacent to the mast on which it has erected its antenna. No effort has been made by the company to provide or market the service north of these towns and other areas from Dungloe to Creeslough. Is this because it has difficulties providing the service due to the mountainous terrain and the need to invest further in benders and additional communication masts?
I am asking the regulator and the Office of the Director of Telecommunications Regulation to examine whether the company has fulfilled the conditions under which it was given the original licences. Why has the Department or the regulator not made any effort to stop the deflectors in the last nine years? Why must the regulator delay further dealing with the applications of local community groups under the Dukes Scheme? She advised me at a previous Oireachtas Joint Committee meeting that she had the applications in her office. I am asking the regulator to grant licences to the local deflector groups who were in existence in 1989 and who should have been allowed to apply in law for licences to operate their self-help systems which they set up in the mid-1970s to provide both British stations and, in some cases, the RTÉ channels when no one else wished to help the communities.
Digital television will be in existence within the next 18 months and the British television digital service will be available by the autumn. Sky Digital will be available at a much lower cost than the present analogue MMDS system which is being offered to the communities by Cable Management. After nine years of confrontation I am asking the regulator to allow the community groups to remain on the air for the short period between now and when the digital service comes into being.
The recent actions of CMI Ireland are merely to divert attention from their failure to provide the service under the conditions of their original licence and also for their desire to claim compensation. The people of Donegal south-west do not want MMDS. They hope that when the Government decides on their policy in relation to digital the preferred option will be digital terrestrial television. If RTÉ is successful in getting a partner and is awarded the digital franchise, they will provide a first class service to the majority of the citizens of Donegal.
We cannot trust the MMDS companies to provide a service to all the people at an affordable cost. They say they have the infrastructure already in place and all that is needed is additional equipment. This is not the case in Donegal where they have invested in very little equipment. Many people will not be serviced by the MMDS system. For example, Cable Management took over a cable system in Donegal town. I understand they are charging up to £100 per household whereas they were trying to charge in the region of £300 to £500 in country areas for the MMDS system. I understand from RTÉ that they would hope to provide the digital service for less than £100 per household. We in Donegal do not trust Cable Management or any of the multichannel MMDS companies to provide the necessary service. We believe we will continue to be a lemon in the system.
When this legislation was introduced in 1989 it is possible that Members of the Oireachtas were not fully aware that Donegal was already being provided with a service by the people helping themselves. I appreciate that in the midlands and south, where it was not easy to pick up the British signals, there was a need for MMDS but we did not have that problem in Donegal. Because of this I believe the 1989 legislation is flawed and I hope the Minister will abdicate the decision to the regulator. However, the regulator will only provide the regulations but both Houses of the Oireachtas will provide the legislation. I am asking my colleagues in both Houses, that when digital television comes up for examination that all the marginalised people — the people on the periphery whom I represent in Donegal south-west — who were able to provide their own service, will be taken into consideration.
