Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

My question concerns the same subhead and the same issue. I think this committee is at one. There is a real urgency in addressing the funding of Irish broadcasting and, indeed as Deputy Dooley says, Irish media. There has been good news in that TV3 is about to sign a deal for rights to the Heineken Cup, which is great. However, I joked with the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Coveney, yesterday that RTÉ could not buy the Cork Constitution FC under-15 B team's television rights. It is being frozen out of a range of areas. It is not in the long-term interests of this country to have a broadcaster which has been cut to the bone and which has a strategic plan but no direction whatsoever from Government as to whether it will be supported. This cannot wait. This is something the Minister will have to address before the summer break, because the world is moving on. The business world is moving on. If we are too slow to fund broadcasting properly we will kill it, and that is not in the democratic interests of this State.

We did very good work in the oral hearing we held in Dublin Castle last year. It is not just the licence fee alone but also the transmission fee and a range of other initiatives that can give us that extra pot of €40 million or €50 million. That is what we should go for. We are clear on that. I ask the Taoiseach every second week and I get a know-nothing response. It is time to respond. What is the Minister going to do about it?