Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will make substantially the same point. RTÉ is in a crisis. Yesterday the BAI took the unusual step of issuing a statement effectively telling the Government to get off its hands and provide the money or the mechanism to allow RTÉ to access the money. I am critical of RTÉ. Today we asked for the executives of RTÉ to appear before the committee to address their failings as identified in a recent peer review carried out by the European Broadcasting Union. RTÉ has a long way to go in addressing its internal matters around value for money and all of that. The BAI is the independent authority charged by the State with protecting and preserving our State broadcasting service. In its determination, RTÉ and TG4 are significantly underfunded and that is a matter for us and the Minister. We can deal with the legacy issues in RTÉ and we will. This committee has always been good at holding RTÉ to account in that regard. We will bring the director general before us and challenge her and her management team on what they are not achieving.

Undoubtedly the retort will be that they do not have the wherewithal to do it because politicians have sat on their hands and not grappled with the funding issue. We took the challenge from the Minister. He is good at giving us challenges and he has referred quite a lot to the committee. We carried out a detailed piece of work. We did not shy away from making tough enough recommendations that are not necessarily politically advantageous to any of us or to our parties but we did so in the best interests of public service broadcasting.

As are others, I am frustrated that it will continue to take another working group until quarter 1 or quarter 2 of next year. Where is this going? There was plenty of scope in the document provided by the committee to give the Minister the wherewithal to draft a memo and take it to the Government. For some reason the Minister chose not to do this and he has passed it on to another committee. That is disappointing.

This cannot be taken in isolation. There is a real crisis here. We do not have to get into the background of it. I have my views on the way in which the Government is looking at this. The Taoiseach, in particular, seems to be infatuated to some extent with the personalities and aura of money that revolves around the social media companies. He is adept at getting selfies with the presidents of the various social media companies and we know his desire to promote himself through fake accounts or others on social media. There is an important foundation that our State broadcaster provides in holding all of us to account in a really independent way. It is an important cornerstone of our democracy. It is under challenge and attack because of the way in which social media companies are developing and evolving. They are getting the advertising spend and the eyeballs and, sadly, RTÉ, TG4 and other broadcasters are not able to keep pace. We really need action and no more procrastination.

Independent broadcasters, in particular independent radio broadcasters, that do excellent work and under their licence carry out public service broadcasting, have also been under significant attack as a result of the shift away from more mainstream media activity. They also need support in developing public service content. I appeal to the Minister to look at what support can be provided to them. We published a Bill to assist local radio stations, in particular, and regional radio stations in the production of public service content through a mechanism similar to the sound and vision fund. In an overall context, will the Minister look at providing the appropriate funding? It really is important in terms of the preservation and protection of our democracy.