Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am happy to speak on the Bill, which has several key provisions, as follows: to enable the industry regulator, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, to impose and-or reduce the, and in some cases exempt from, payment of the broadcasting levy by certain broadcasters for new services; to provide for part-funding of the BAI from television licence receipts to a maximum of 50% of its funding, with the intention of reducing the existing broadcasting levy burden on all broadcasters; to allow the BAI to accrue a level of working capital to meet its operational requirements, which is a very interesting statement; to provide flexibility to the BAI in how it charges the broadcasting levy; and to introduce a new broadcasting funding scheme, administered by the BAI, to provide a bursary grant scheme for professional journalists working in certain sound broadcasters at local or community level.

This last item is one I am most intrigued by and most inclined to support. This is as it should be. We have to inspire and promote creative young journalists and people in the colleges who study journalism, and we must have some kind of incentives for them to be able to sustain themselves and to enhance and promote what goes on in community life. It is all about community, as far as I am concerned. Community has been forgotten about by successive Governments and the institutions of the State. Everything has been removed from the communities but without those communities, we would be a much poorer place, in particular without the people who make those communities tick. They are not waiting for handouts from the State. They are the enablers and the enthusiasts, and they nurture and support all things local. It is not all about Dublin 4 and stopping at the M50, and there is a lot of Ireland and many good people beyond that. The Minister himself came to Cluain Meala, the vale of honey, for his bean chéile. Although it was a long time ago, he should know more about rural Ireland than others.

The last point was critical. I fully support the work of local and community radio as an important voice in our national debate. A hurricane is supposed to be coming in over us tonight. I welcome the new-found engagement of the national emergency group in warning people, which is very welcome, as they have the expertise and all the scientific measurements and information from Met Éireann advising them. Supposing it does arrive and it has catastrophic effects, who will be the conveyor of communications about the damage for local people? It will not be RTÉ or any national broadcaster; it will be community radio and local radio, in my case, Tipp FM, Tipp Mid West Radio and WLR across the border. They will be on the ground, providing the service. If Dublin gets hit hard, we will not get a look-in on the news, either in Tipperary or anywhere else, because it is all about Dublin. We have seen that time and time again. When the River Dodder flooded 30 years ago, it was banner headlines from morning to night. We could be washed away or and blown away in Tipperary and RTÉ would not even know about it.

I want to salute the retired Damien Tiernan and his camera crews. Damien Tiernan was a reporter who did sterling work over the years. He struggled and he fought, and the studio was closed and merged into Waterford Institute of Technology, and we put up with that as well. We now have Conor Kane, who has replaced him. Damien Tiernan found it harder and harder to get stories and input broadcast after he had gone out and diligently reported the news. He met the people and looked after them, and was embraced and engaged by the people. He filed stories and reports but they fell off the conveyor belt in RTÉ, for whatever reason. The local news is important to the people - ní neart go cur le chéile. The people of An Roinn, Caisleain Nua and Tiobraid Árann Theas are as important as the people of Dublin 4 and the Minister should never forget that. It is at his peril that he would forget it but he has forgotten it and the Government has forgotten it. They do not support the people in rural Ireland. We do not want that much support. We want to be left alone to live in freedom, with a modicum of free press, free reporting and impartial journalism, not the organs of State and public service broadcasters out there attacking and demonising the people of rural Ireland, and making a mockery and a skit of them. That is what has happened so many times.

We see this in the context of how media ownership in this country is organised and supported. To take the most recent incident, beef farmers were driven to distraction and the beef plan was set up because monopolies in the beef industry have been mushrooming, growing and expanding for the last 40 years, and the industry has been getting away with it while successive Governments stood idly by. This time, farmers were driven to distraction. It is not that they wanted to be on pickets or wanted to upset workers in the factories but they wanted to expose this. I am still waiting for "RTÉ Investigates" to do a proper exposé on the price of a bullock or heifer when it goes into the factory, and what the farmer gets, what the factory gets and what the supermarket gets.

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