Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

As I was saying when the debate adjourned, I must protest at the introduction of these amendments at this late stage of the Bill. I agree with the substance of the amendments, but I believe that if they were to be in this Bill - I do not think they should be in the Bill at all - then they should have been introduced when the Bill was published. There was plenty of time to do so. Committee Stage was missed and now we get a whole new section of the Bill on Report Stage.

Furthermore, I do not believe that this is a broadcasting Bill. The subject matter should have been the subject of a broadcasting (amendment) Bill. I have not yet heard a good explanation as to what was so complicated with bringing in a very short Bill called the broadcasting Bill and consisting of the sections, a Long Title and a Short Title. Deputy Ferris and I agree that if this were to happen, we would have facilitated the quick passage of that Bill.

As far as it goes, I welcome what we are doing here. However, I cannot agree with the Minister that Michael D. Higgins did all the work in setting up TG4. Mrs. Máire Geoghegan Quinn had done work before him and some of us were involved in the protests over many years. I remember the day I went to see my good friend Ciarán Ó Finneadha in prison. I managed to have the honour of bringing him out of the prison that evening, because he was released from Shelton Abbey for a protest in which he had been involved looking for adequate television coverage. I cannot agree with the Minister's assertion that before the advent of TG4, RTE fulfilled its obligations in respect of the language. Anybody who tried to bring up Irish speaking children, inside or outside the Gaeltacht, would know that at that time, there were virtually no children's programmes in Irish. Children can pick up languages with no difficulty, but there were virtually no children's programmes in the Irish language.

I have often said that the greatest revolution that ever took place in the Irish language was the development of children's programme on mainstream television. A child of two or three years of age will soak up a second language like a sponge, and will learn two languages as easy as one language, and will never lose those languages if he or she keeps in contact with them. RTE, the national broadcaster, which had a statutory duty towards the language, totally neglected that duty. Many people, like myself, believe that this basic requirement of the legislation was never fulfilled.

I have always been sceptical about general good wishes in Bills that do not provide anything concrete. Fair play to Michael D. Higgins and fair play to the Christmas meeting of the Cabinet that allowed this to be slipped through. That is the type of meeting with 50 items on the agenda that Ministers want to get through without much criticism. Thanks be to God this one got through, because it was one of the best things that did happen, and TG4 has provided a magnificent service.

I welcome the Minister's statement of intention that he will look at the broadcasting issue. I do not find TG4 programmes hugely inferior to RTE 1 programmes. I asked a parliamentary question about the cost of an hour of home produced television on RTE and the cost of an hour of home produced television on TG4, which should be more expensive because it is in the minority language. I never got the answer, although I was promised that it would be supplied. My suspicion is that it is much cheaper on TG4. If it is cheaper and if we are giving out the public's money through the licence and through the Exchequer, then why is it so expensive on RTE? I cannot see the qualitative difference. A football or hurling match, the Tour de France or Wimbledon is as good on TG4 as it is on RTE. Over the years when making programmes, RTE have made a huge mystery and have had a huge staff.

I listen to "Adhmhaidin" in the morning on Raidió na Gaeltachta. Sometimes I listen to "Morning Ireland". Raidió na Gaeltachta manages to cover the local, the national and the international and it often gets a side of the international stories that one would not get from the standard, bland stuff on RTE. I look at the staff that produce "Adhmhaidin" or similar programmes on other radio stations and then I look at the staff that it takes to produce the RTE programme, which I admit goes on a bit longer in the morning. However, when I compare the costs of the staff, it is amazing that the listeners do not seem to notice the difference because on a proportional level, allowing for the number of Irish speakers in the country, Raidió na Gaeltachta has been doing as well. It is a well known fact that the mid-morning programmes on the local radio stations compare well in their own regions for market share with RTE programmes. If we look at the resources put into the programmes by RTE, we must wonder if the whole system the Minister is tinkering with today completely flawed. I must say that I think it is.

The Minister said that there is financial pressure on RTE. I am not surprised. He mentioned the BBC. Britain has a population of 60 million, whereas we have a population on this island of 6 million people, so obviously things have to be done to scale. If we did an absolute analysis on the money spent on public broadcasting, I am not sure that we are getting value for money.

RTE phone-in programmes will have different studios, special lines and so on. Every other radio station in the country just gets its listeners on the telephone. The people seem to understand that. We should be critical and open and look for explanations. Just because RTE has moved from an outrageous position of paying outrageous money to people, with historically outrageous staffing levels, to a somewhat slimmed down version does not mean that the organisation has got to where it should be and to where the competition is. I am talking here about public service competition in the broadest sense of the term.

I will not oppose these amendments tonight because they represent a step; céim bheag sa treo cheart. However, it is only a small step in the right direction. We need a root and branch reorganisation of how we fund public service broadcasting and how we measure the value we are getting for public service broadcasting. We must also remember that public service broadcasting is for everybody in this country and does not reflect the views of a small, cosy set that seems to consist perennially of the commentators on what is right and wrong in this society. Unfortunately, the social spread leaves much to be desired. How often do we hear a person, perhaps a community worker from the Minister's area of Tallaght, or a person from a more remote area geographically being asked for their views on the great issues of the day? From listening to many of the programmes, it seems all we get all the time are the same small, close circle who would be communing with each other here. The big fad in the past five years has been the trend whereby politicians have been pushed aside and replaced by media commentators on news programmes that we see on our television screens. Every second person who writes articles in our newspapers is on some radio or television programme giving us his or her news on that medium as well and no doubt he or she gets the appropriate fee for doing so. There are huge issues to be dealt with in broadcasting.

I accept these amendments in as far as they go but if the Minister thinks that is a full endorsement of them, it is not. This is literally a stop-gap measure and we will expect him to come back here with root and branch proposals for the broadcasting sector that will deal with issues of major public concern regarding how broadcasting is funded, how the money is distributed and whether our public service broadcasting is a mirror reflective of the totality of Irish society or of only one section of it.

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