Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is very welcome. I apologise for being late when she gave her introduction. Along with a number of my Fine Gael colleagues, we made a submission to the Future of Media Commission. We met representatives of many of the media organisations, regional newspapers, regional radio stations, etc. There is strong support for media content in Ireland. Page 39 shows the reported levels of trust in specific media and technology providers, including RTÉ, TG4, local radio stations, newspapers and Irish based websites. It is more than 70%, which is very high, whereas the new social media sources listed are down at 34%.

It is quite telling that the support is there from the public to support the content across all those media. Like other colleagues, I feel that we hedged not making a decision on the television licence, which was a recommendation of the report. We need to go down the route of direct taxation if we are going to maintain all media sources. We must put enough funding in to make sure we are able to maintain regional newspapers and radio stations and RTÉ, which has eaten up a chunk of the money. We need a significant fund. I do not see that we are going to reach the figure we need bar seeking funding directly from the Exchequer.

There are a number of positive proposals. Nearly everything we put forward in our proposal forms part of the recommendations. I concur with Senator Cassells, however, with regard to the re-establishing of reporters in the Houses of the Oireachtas Service, who were there up until four or five years ago. That would be important. I ask that this perhaps be taken on board. The direct comments of any of us who represent people and organisations throughout the country could then be sent to regional newspapers and radio stations. That was stopped approximately five or six years ago.