Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am coming to it. There has to be a change in the funding because they cannot have a monopoly on funding. All that the IBI is looking for today - and I appreciate what the delegates have said so far - is fairness. This committee has an excellent Chairman and team of people. The IBI will have to give clear recommendations on the exact programme of work it wants carried out. The delegates have outlined some of it but I would like them to elaborate further on what job of work they want us to do. Where do they want this to go? What exact agenda should we have after today's meeting? In the local media while one is not treated with kid gloves - one will get a belt in the jaw if one deserves it - one will not be bullied. One will be treated fairly, quizzed on the issues and every one of us who were local representatives and then national representatives have been treated fairly by local media over the years. We appreciate that and we want the local media to be treated fairly as well. The bullying that goes on in Dublin has to stop. It happens in many ways and it is happening to the local radio stations as well because there is a certain degree of arrogance. We all appreciate the service that Met Éireann gives us but last night I was studying figures which were released yesterday for the pay associated with giving us our weather forecast. It is shocking.

The reason local radio stations such as Radio Kerry are so effective is that one minute a person might be producing a show, a prestigious operation, and two minutes later that person could be reading death notices. That is the point. They adapt. They change. They do not have opinions of themselves. They are workers. That is what is lacking in the national media and that is why it costs us so much to run our programming in the national broadcaster.