Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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I thank everybody for their presentations and thoughts at this late hour. My party is here because we see a significant threat to public service broadcasting. There is a multiplicity of reasons for it, of which the witnesses are well aware. We have concerns that the growth of the likes of Facebook, Google, Amazon and Netflix poses a real and significant threat to our capacity as a nation to preserve and protect local news and current affairs, to the programming that has developed around our culture, language and music and to our indigenous production sector. We heard from TV3 before the present delegations had arrived. Their representatives believe RTE should not receive any more funding from licence fees and the present delegation suggests our public service broadcaster should receive no funds from retransmission. The BAI is the competent authority and has indicated, on more than one occasion, that it believes the public service broadcaster will be compromised in terms of reaching its legislative remit as a public service broadcaster unless it gets additional funding.

I accept that RTE has a long way to go to trim its sails and focus its attention on the future so that it is an organisation that is fit for purpose. When RTE was before us, I was very direct with the director general, DG, and said that before we would consider addressing its financial shortfall it would have to put in place a plan with which we were comfortable and which demonstrated to us that it was willing to take up the challenge. In follow-up conversations with the DG and others, it is my view that it is serious about this but, despite that, there remains a crisis. It is not just the demise of RTE or a public service broadcaster, it is a threat to democracy as we know it. Once one moves away from recognised, branded news and current affairs and moves into the world of Google, Facebook and social media platforms, the connection between the origin of news and its authenticity and verification can be seriously compromised. A lot of talk, time and effort has been put into following whether or not Russia had an input into the outcome of the most recent US presidential election. It is not such a far-fetched step to believe that, where a public service broadcaster diminishes and there is a failure to protect and preserve the ethics of journalism then, over time, there is a tendency to white out content that is properly curated, properly verified editorially and comes from an authentic source, all of which has a potential impact on democracies. The witnesses before us and the public service broadcaster share the same space and one or other spoke of the necessity to develop a closer partnership to work against the threat of the likes of Google, Facebook and others which do not see themselves as publishers or broadcasters but merely in terms of access to information.

The debate needs to move on. If one believes in public service broadcasting one must be prepared to follow it through and be prepared to pay for it. The viewer pays at the moment and we can have arguments about double taxation or where something is already paid for but, if the public service cannot do what it is required to do and what we, in a functioning democracy, want it to do, there is a problem. If we need a vibrant, diversified broadcasting market we have to look seriously at how we address it and that means looking at a proper funding model. In the context of retransmission, all we are asking for, and what we have been asked for by the Minister following the heads of the Bill, is to get out of the way to give the witnesses and RTE the capacity to negotiate. The witnesses have set out their stall, as has RTE, and I do not see us getting into the negotiations as it is not our role. It is a matter of removing the provision from the legislation and allowing a sensible dialogue also involving, if necessary, the BAI.

I went through the submissions and have some questions. My first is to the platform operators. A lot has been made of the delicate broadcasting ecology of channel providers, platforms, must-offer or must-carry rules, the threat that charging for content could pose and electronic programming guide prominence and I accept the point that anything that interfered with them could be damaging to all parties. To which operators are these rules applicable? The Vodafone representative, Mr. O'Brien, said, "At our discretion and as part of our integrated strategy, we have provided RTE with top positioning within our electronic programming guides". This appears to be a commercial decision and not one imposed by the legislation. Can the witnesses clarify that? Virgin appeared to be of the same view. Does the prominence requirements for public service channels not apply, so that it is at their discretion too? Are the requirements of section 77 regarding prominence applicable to Sky? I know it gives RTE very significant prominence but is it required to do that? The must-carry rule does not apply to Sky, as I understand it, and it seems the negotiation with RTE is a little one-way in Sky's favour. There is no electronic programming guide prominence requirement, no must-carry requirement but a must-offer requirement on RTE. If prominence has been accorded to the commercial negotiations in which they were involved, why would facilitating RTE in negotiating its channels not be part of them? It seems sensible to me. I get the fact that there are issues that need to be addressed but all it would do is free up the capacity for both sides to negotiate.

I have some sympathy with Mr. Wheeldon, who had to play the bad cop to some extent. He delivered a rather strong message and he has to do that on behalf of his company. He said, "Regardless of any legislative change or the value that RTE does or does not deliver to our platform, there are no circumstances in which we would change our approach and begin to make payments for a free-to-air channel in any of our markets simply because of the precedent that it would set for us elsewhere." It does not sit well with me as a legislator to be told that by Sky. I will let other people work out what I mean. I respect the fact that he is representing his company but I do not take it too well. We have a job to do and I have outlined from the start what that job is. At its core, it is about the preservation and protection of our identity as an independent country. It is about our culture, our music, our news, our current affairs and wanting to protect democracy.

I do not believe that is the best way to go. That might be better for the arguments with RTE, but not here.