Alex White (Dublin South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am open to any suggestions members may have. In the current period, the most important step we can take is to freshen up the database used by An Post and make it more robust.

On the commercial broadcasting sector, I dealt with this matter in recent days in discussion with Deputy Patrick O'Donovan, who is present. We have a sound and vision scheme, which is allocated 7% of the income generated from the television licence. The commercial sector is meeting a real need, especially in rural areas but elsewhere also. However, we have never before contemplated - I respect the fact that some members are proposing do so now and I do not want to paraphrase them - the redistribution, as it were, of the licence fee across the board to the commercial sector as well as the public sector. To do so would, at a minimum, be problematic for the following reason, unless someone has a better or different suggestion.

It would require the assessment of individual programmes and strands of programmes across the board in the commercial sector and, presumably, in the public sector ultimately also to determine whether this or that programme was a public service programme and, if it was, whether it should get some of the licence fee. As I said in the Dáil the other day and have said elsewhere, there are some programmes that are capable of being categorised on both sides of the ledger. Sports programming performs a public service but also attracts great commercial interest and value for the broadcaster. Senator Mooney and I soldiered in the speech programme sector many years ago and the Senator still does. A speech programme is not necessarily a public service programme in every case, but who is to say? If the listener is being entertained by it, is it not performing a public service? The definitional issue is problematic. That is all I am saying. Ultimately, it has been the policy of Governments of all persuasions and all colours going right back that the licence fee was largely dedicated to ensuring there was a robust public service broadcaster, in this case RTE and TG4. If one starts to look at redistributing those supports out of the public service and into the commercial sector on the basis of some kind of definitional approach to programmes or programme strands, one is going to give oneself a huge job of work. I accept that the fact that it is a job of work is not a good enough reason not to do it, but it seems to me that it would be extremely difficult and raise even more problems than it might solve. That said, commercial local radio performs a huge job for the listeners and communities across the country and I am prepared, as I have said we should be prepared to do, to look at ways to enhance the financial supports, or financial environment I should say, that those stations operate in, in particular the smaller, more vulnerable ones outside the main cities.