Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister. He will be aware of the plans and consideration given to closing RTE's London office in September of this year. I applaud the fact that RTE is taking its cost saving measures seriously. At a time when all businesses are rationalising and examining cost benefit analyses there is no reason RTE should be any different. However, leaving aside the rationalisation aspect, the political perspective in terms of what we signed up to in 1998 is that we have a North-South and an east-west dimension. To digress somewhat, the RTE office in Belfast enhanced its services following the agreement in 1998 but there is an east-west dimension also. We now have a British-Irish Council office, with its secretariat set up in Edinburgh. We are examining enhanced co-operation, building on existing good relations between the United Kingdom and Ireland, and there is a political perspective in that regard, especially in light of the BBC offices located in London, throughout the United Kingdom and also in Belfast. It also has an office in RTE at Donnybrook.

My point is about journalistic perspective. While we must rationalise, and if that means closing an office I will agree with it if there are savings to be made, we still must have journalistic perspective. I am not a journalist but it will not be good enough if we contemplate introducing a reactionary journalistic perspective to the United Kingdom. It will be inexplicable if we decide to take the human resource out of the United Kingdom. We can consider different permutations in terms of how that can be done. We can examine the model in Donnybrook where the BBC has a desk and also the possibility of an RTE desk being facilitated in London. That is an issue on which we must think outside the box.

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