Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses. They made very interesting presentations. I have both questions to ask and comments to make. I congratulate the BAI on the 1916 commemorations, which were successful. The radio and television inputs there were highly successful also. I am happy that, as a natural spin-off from that, the BAI is involved in the Creative Ireland project, which has enormous potential to bring the arts to every child and adult irrespective of social background or location. It is enormously liberating for people and has huge implications for quality of life and tourism. I am delighted the BAI is involved. Having regard to the great success of the 1916 commemoration and without seeking in any way to politicise the committee, I must congratulate my constituency colleague, the Minister, Deputy Heather Humphreys, for her political leadership in respect of this matter. There is a consensus on that.

The references to Creative Ireland and 1916 lead me to the work on archiving RTE programmes. It comes within the brief of the BAI to see that this happens. Those programmes represent a huge social history of our country and are a major artistic resource in themselves. What work is being done to archive and rebroadcast them?

No one in the room will say TG4 is not an enormous success. It is very popular. What is exciting is the number of non-Gaelic speakers who watch, enjoy, relate to and are very pleased with it. The position is similar in the context of Raidió na Gaeltachta. I am not sure that I sense there is an adequate presence of the Irish language and Irish culture on RTE 1 and RTE 2. The witnesses might correct me if I am wrong in that regard. I would be very happy to be proven wrong.

Plurality was mentioned. Local radio is a hugely important medium, in particular for a certain demographic which might not access other media, including modern multimedia.

Are the witnesses confident that local radio is playing on a level pitch or could more be done to support it? Is it adequately supported? I am approaching this as a lay person based on anecdotal evidence but one gets the impression it is underfunded or under-resourced, perhaps also in terms of commercial input.

The witnesses talked about structures, funding and plurality in multimedia and I want to raise a question while they are here because it is relevant. It would be remiss of me not to bring it into the debate and seek a reaction although in many respects it is probably more germane to Friday's meeting. I would like all three witnesses to respond because it is a serious matter. There are people in the country with a certain belief and if what they believe is true it is very serious. If what they believe is not true it is still serious. The traditional religious population of the country - people who hold what we consider conservative, traditional values - feel very alienated at the moment. They have a perception that the broadcast media is against them, their culture and set of beliefs, that it is not reflective of their views, beliefs and practices and does not give adequate expression to them. I have not met any who are suggesting they should have exclusivity but they are feeling alienated. They may be completely wrong and the witnesses may be able to readily establish that for me. If they are wrong, how could their firm belief on this be addressed? I will finish but it is a very important point. I am only doing my job. Very educated people with numerous degrees, including postgraduate qualifications, come to me with this view. It is not the view of only one sector of the population. It is the view of quite a range of people, some of whom have very high educational levels. It does not matter what level of education they have but it would be too simplistic to assume their view is based on some form of ignorance because it is not. I am interested in the witnesses' response to it. They will probably tell me it is more germane to Friday's discussion. I can live with that because I can raise it again then.