Mr. Simon McGarr:

My thanks to the committee and the Chair for the invitation to speak here today. I am a solicitor with McGarr Solicitors and I have been asked to attend on behalf of our client Digital Rights Ireland.

We have been invited to make submissions on the Broadcasting (Amendment) Bill 2023. It is a short Bill that seeks to: task the director general of RTÉ with making the RTÉ archives available for public inspection and ensure their publication along with related material and access tools; and to make the archives freely available for personal research and academic use. Those are the two aims.

The combined intent of these amendments appears clear - to ensure that the general and expert publics would both have the ability and the right to use, access and possibly share material from the RTÉ archives on a non-commercial basis. This mandate would dovetail with the existing plans to digitise the RTÉ archive, which has previously been financially supported by the BAI as well as internally by RTÉ.

While the Broadcasting (Amendment) Bill 2023 does not put a time limit on the successful opening of the archives, it is clear that to do so will involve a considerable upfront commitment in terms of accelerating the existing digitisation projects. Our submission today is intended to argue that commitment represents an opportunity to invest in an uniquely Irish means of fighting online disinformation and misinformation, with the potential returns in political stability and a healthy public realm extending decades hence.

The UK-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue examined 13.1 million posts across 12 online platforms as part of its recent report entitled An Investigation into the Online Mis- and Disinformation Ecosystem in Ireland. It found that “Alternative media outlets play an outsized role within this mis- and dis- information ecosystem”. It also fund that those outlets produced "content that is conspiratorial and confrontational towards mainstream media, and their coverage of topics can provide a veneer of credibility to rumours and unverified claims circulating”.

The former editor of The Guardian, and founding member of Facebook’s oversight board, Mr. Alan Rusbridger, described the key problem as one of economics running directly against the social need, stating:

Chaotic information was free: good information was expensive. Truth - if that’s what journalism offered - was living in a gated community."

The RTÉ Archives represent a unique public repository of good information, and by making them freely available, however one would read that term, for non-commercial purposes, this Bill would put on an equal footing all of us who would like to see the public realm supported and empowered in the face of chaotic and sometimes malicious misinformation and disinformation. Video, in particular, short-form video, has increasingly become the primary method of people engaging with each other and sharing information and opinion about the country and world we live in. It is crucial that the raw material, from the trusted sources of RTÉ, is available to feed and nourish that dialogue as the trend continues. It is said in economics that bad money drives out good. This Bill is an opportunity for the Oireachtas and the Government to take a step to ensure good information has an opportunity to drive out the bad, now and for decades to come.