Mr. Francis M. O'Donnell:

Frankly, we cannot live in this post-Second World War time warp. We are in the 21st century so we should get with it. Ireland can play a role in this. If we can feel a passion for this and foreign affairs and have our Tánaiste, Taoiseach and President drive these sorts of messages home in as many fora as possible, perhaps a momentum can be built. I am sure there will be many people in other countries in the EU, Europe and beyond who will be willing to join it.

The question of media freedom is fundamentally important. We ought to have a free media. However, we have a problem in the west. What we increasingly see with globalisation are mergers and acquisitions, industry consolidation and large conglomerates taking over and pushing out small enterprise. It happens in agriculture, the retail sector, the communications industry and the media. Even in the US, about four or five media conglomerates largely dictate content - even on the small radio stations one tunes into as one drives along route 66. We have lost the diversity of small enterprise that ought to underpin the democracy of the economy. This is what I would call the down side of globalisation and something needs to be done about it either through anti-trust legislation or some measure to prevent the emergence of oligopoly in these different marketplaces. It is fundamental for democracy that we have a free press but it is also fundamental that we have diversity of opinion and freedom of expression and that it is accessible and can be expressed. When one has too few people controlling the vast empires that comprise the media world today, liberty is at risk.