Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I do not propose to detain the House at this hour of the night with the three T's or a typical Second Stage speech on everything I know about broadcasting on the island of Ireland. I will endeavour to stick to the legislative proposal before us.

I have a question about the proposal for the broadcasting funding scheme to be administered by the BAI to provide a bursary grants scheme for professional journalists working in certain sound broadcasters at local or community level. Will the Minister give some consideration to broadening the scheme to include print journalism? Does he have a view on whether it should be expanded to include print journalism? As we all know, historically, many journalists cut their teeth in the back street offices of local newspapers. There are many great journalists who come out of that stable and moved into the broadcasting or print journalism sphere. It would be a worthwhile proposal if it could be considered.

While the legislation is silent on the household charge, the Minister did make an announcement on it. However, he is telling us that it will be five years before it is introduced. For the life of me, I cannot understand why we have to wait for five years. I surmise that there may be political sensitivities surrounding the very idea of introducing a household charge based on experiences in the past with certain other proposals for charges. However, I do not think we should be afraid to move in that direction sooner than the Minister is proposing to do. If we are really serious about content creation, particularly from a cultural and indigenous point of view when we know that there is such creativity on this island, and if we know that we are not realising the full potential of the television licence fee and that it has a bearing on public service broadcasting, I do not understand why we cannot be more radical and imaginative in moving with greater haste and urgency. I do not understand why ensuring there is the requisite funding to support the creative content that is so vital and that sustains us could not be done in way less than five years. I share Deputy Dooley's point. I think the Minister would find agreement across the House on how we could reach that point, if the message of a household charge is articulated in the right way to the people such they understand, as citizens, what they get for their money, namely, greater content and home-grown and indigenous content, displacing some of the dross being imported by RTÉ, much of which can be watched on most other platforms. If we are not creating indigenous content, we are going down the slippery slope towards greater homogenisation. We badly need to ensure we protect and encourage home-grown content producers. It is self-evident that the content produced is of the highest order. It receives global recognition. We need to be braver in how we approach issues such as the household charge. I reiterate that the Minister would find favour across the House if there was dialogue with Opposition Members on how it could be achieved.

My last point is not pertinent to the legislation but relates to the recent announcement made by RTÉ on Lyric FM and the potential closure of the Cork studios. If RTÉ was looking to Members of this House to advocate for it on the basis of flying kites of this nature, it was going about it in a very bad way. Suggesting, for instance, in such an announcement that Lyric FM or the station in Cork which is a major regional component of RTÉ's output be closed down was not the way to go if RTÉ was seeking to find friends in political circles. We all see it as the move that it was. If it was seeking to leverage from us, as politicians representing these areas, a degree of sympathy to approach the Government to increase its funding stream, or using us as leverage to increase its funding stream in order that it could go back to the Government for a greater share of the pot, I suggest to RTÉ that it was not the way to go. It needs to engage in dialogue a little more with local public representatives on its future plans. At the same time, if we do not have RTÉ, if we do not have a public service broadcasting model, or if it is not on a sound financial footing and not future-proofed because it cannot drive new content owing to a lack of revenue, five years is too far into the future for a household charge.

As I said, there would be a willingness to engage on what broadcasting would look like in the future, and Members of this House would co-operate with the Government in that regard.

I want to ask the Minister about the EU's "Television Without Frontiers" directive. While I am asking the Minister to look into the crystal ball, it would be very useful to have the Minister's perspective on where the "Television Without Frontiers" directive stands if UK stations leave the EU and what arrangements, if any, would need to be put in place, particularly where UK channels are advertising within the Irish market. I do not know if that question is pertinent but it would be useful to have a perspective in regard to where stands the "Television Without Frontiers" directive in the event a no-deal Brexit. We have not heard of how the broadcasting component of Brexit will play out, given we consume so much content from the United Kingdom. It could be that it has no effect whatsoever but it would be useful to hear the Minister's perspective on that.

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