Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

In the event they shall probably say, "God be with Noel Dempsey, wherever he is now, but he did not prepare our areas." RTE has stated the analogue transmission network "may not survive beyond 2012-2015". More than 500,000 households rely completely on terrestrial analogue services and nearly all will experience some cost because of the switchover. So far the Government has conducted very little research in this regard. As the rest of the European Union is migrating from digital in the next few years, the quality of Irish broadcast services will be affected unless we, too, rapidly make the switch to digital services.

For the Labour Party, public service broadcasting has always been a cornerstone of the broadcasting system, as it embodies qualities such as range and balance, diversity, social and cultural values and universality which are essential to a properly functioning democracy. We are proud of the role Deputy Michael D. Higgins played as Minister in the development of public service broadcasting, with the foundation of TG4 and the expansion of RTE's services. Digital technologies, however, may undermine the delivery of public service broadcasts and threaten such seminal principles as being free at the point of use, universally available and connecting with a majority of the national audience. There is a risk that as digital services become more ubiquitous, a broadcasting ecology that is predominantly pay-per-view, with few locally produced programmes, could develop. That is something we must avoid at all costs. That is the reason the national broadcaster has stressed the need for the urgent development of Irish digital services.

We have heard right wing journalists debate whether there should be a licence fee, if it is sustainable in the digital era or whether the public service broadcasters, RTE and TG4, should be allowed to take advertising. There are profound issues involved. I warmly welcome the development of broadcasting abroad but digital broadcasting necessitates a wider debate afforded by the discussion on this Bill.

The development of digital broadcasting offers the national public service broadcaster a major opportunity to forge a unique role in the broadcasting of programmes of national importance as the main facilitators of a national shared public space. I commend RTE, TG4 and other commercial broadcasters on the public service side on the work that has been done particularly in the past decade.

A disappointing feature of the Bill is section 9, to which I will table amendments on Committee Stage. Regarding the conditions to be applied to the awarding of multiplex contracts, there is no a specific reference to public sector broadcasting.

I welcome the provisions for digital radio and the multiplexes. I was contacted by a number of people who raised concerns about the introduction of digital audio broadcasting, DAB, technology. In an article in a recent edition of the The Guardian the ACC plus, the advanced audio coding format, was officially adopted as a new standard for digital audio broadcasting. A question posed in the article was whether DAB technology in the United Kingdom is perhaps obsolete. DAB technology necessitates the introduction of new transmission equipment. It also involves listeners having the relevant technology to access the radio services. I am aware RTE has recently run a six month trial of DAB along the east coast involving RTE Radio 1, 2FM, RTE Raidió na Gaeltachta, RTE Lyric FM, Today FM and WRN. I understand that currently there are no DAB services available in Ireland. Therefore, I am not sure if anyone who bought a DAB set recently can receive digital radio broadcasts. The Minister might respond to that point.

Developing DAB technologies offers RTE and other broadcasters an opportunity to establish new niche services and experiment with a wide variety of digital content. This would be a major development for community and local stations. I was contacted recently by a retired engineer, Mr. Enda O'Kane, regarding the provision of digital radio mondiale, DRM, services, which he and many others — I referred to the recent article in The Guardian — have said would offer many advances over the existing analogue broadcasting systems, especially from the point of view of interference which limits listening enjoyment, particularly at night. I ask the Minister to respond to that point in regard to the radio multiplexes.

One of the interesting questions arising under the legislation is how the Minister intends to proceed with spectrum management once the analogue signal is switched off. Spectrum space has potentially very high commercial values and can be used for a wide range of mobile TV, standard mobile telephone services, wireless broadband, terrestrial high definition TV, standard definition TV channels, interactive services or even, as described by the European Commission, the wildcard option of innovative new services.

The argument has been put forward that the public good will be best served by allocating much of the released frequencies to terrestrial high definition television, HDTV. However, HDTV requires much more spectrum space. The Minister indicated in his Seanad speech on the Bill that under this legislation six multiplexes will be dedicated for DTT facilitating approximately 25 to 30 standard channels. Why did he decide on standard channels rather than high definition television? As I said to Deputy Durkan, we might see the next Government and Opposition on high definition television. Why will there be only 25 to 30 standard channels?

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