Cecilia Keaveney (Fianna Fail)

I note the historic event where the Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement met today with the Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee from Westminster. It is a first which shows the evolution of the Good Friday Agreement where representatives not only from North and South but east and west were present. We are usually in separate locations but we had members from all points of the compass, with cross-membership of the Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee and the Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, in the one location. Everybody's joint efforts to look at issues such as the dissidents and the threat to economic prosperity, and more positively, the opportunities we will have to drive prosperity in the province of Ulster was core to the debate and discussions.

I ask the Leader to facilitate a debate and information session on the switch-off of the analogue service for television on the island of Ireland when we will go digital in 2012. My information is that a number of relays are not included in the system. We need answers on what is included, what is excluded and what the costs will be for people once the transition takes place. There is no point in getting into a panic a week or a month before the event takes place. Currently, there is a concept known as "saorview" and "saorsat". It will be far from saor, free. We need to discuss a lot of technical detail. Ultimately, it will cost people, especially in certain locations in rural and urban parts of the country, anything between €150 and €250 for the switch-over and multiple uses of technology. We should debate the issues in advance of the change and ensure that television through which we sell our message and get information is not a complete disaster on the 2012 switch-over from analogue to digital.