Seymour Crawford (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)

I will conclude on my local radio stations, in particular the one close to the Acting Chairman's heart, LMFM. It covers the south of my constituency in County Monaghan. Northern Sound, linked with ShannonSide, covers the rest of the county. These stations have been invaluable in providing everyone with an opportunity to have a say. ShannonSide-Northern Sound has the "Joe Finnegan Show", which addresses all sorts of issues from 9 a.m. until midday or so. Noel Walsh and others are on later in the afternoon and J. P. Graham leads the sports team. It is fantastic that club games are covered on local radio. Older people who have been interested in sports for all of their lives can sit in their corner chairs and hear about what has happened to the clubs they love so much or listen to games minute-by-minute.

Regarding religious broadcasting, the Reverend Jean Mackerel runs a programme on Northern Sound late on Sunday nights and there is a religious service in the morning. This also occurs on national radio stations and so on. Religious broadcasting is vital. People in cars, homes and hospitals and elderly people who cannot go to church services, masses and so on have the opportunity to spend a quiet hour with their religions. Given the importance of this situation continuing, we should not be shy about it. Religion is important, although it has suffered from problems in recent years. Due to religious scandals in all churches, young people saw an excuse not to attend. Perhaps for this reason there is so much suicide and so on. The Bill should ensure that religious broadcasting of all churches gets priority and is assured. We should not apologise for the right to broadcast for our religious groups and to ensure that they get their fair share.

I welcome the Bill in general. As Deputy Sheehan stated, amendments will be tabled to it. I hope that our amendments will be considered constructively and, where possible, accepted during the debate. I also hope that the Bill emerges as the best possible legislation, as it has been awaited for a long time. It should serve to better broadcasting for many years. The television licence and other issues will be dealt with by our spokesperson and I will not address the technical details of that. The station cannot live without funding and neither can the smaller broadcasting stations. They should all get a fair crack of the whip. I support the Bill.

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