Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister. The Labour Party supports the Bill because at its heart is addressing an issue that should have made everybody in Ireland feel extremely uncomfortable, that is, that a multimillionaire tax exile who owns several radio stations and did not like what certain journalists were writing about him decided to ban entire publications and representatives who work for those publications from speaking on the radio stations he owns. This ban even extended to the sports programmes on those stations. What was at the heart of this was an attack on journalism, free speech and democracy.

As was stated, there are many things we have taken for granted, such as the way democracy works, how people carry themselves in public forums, the way the Judiciary works and the way that journalism seeks the truth. Members have seen that in the United States the media have been portrayed as being the enemy of the people. In this country, two journalists have been murdered in the past 25 years. Journalism is at the heart of democracy because journalists seek the truth. All those in political circles have complaints about individual publications, and sometimes about individual journalists, and we sometimes feel that we have been unfairly criticised, but central to our belief system in a republic is that journalism is allowed to do what it is supposed to do. As such, for a radio station that, effectively, gets its licence from the Oireachtas to ban several publications from appearing on any programme on that station is an outrage and the Oireachtas has to react. That is why the Labour Party is in full support of the Bill.

The Minister outlined several issues pertaining to the Bill and it is important that she and her Department examine proposed legislation. I accept that if legislation is to be enacted, it must be workable.

I also accept the point made by Deputy Cullinane in respect of having Second Stage in 18 months. We have also been on the receiving end of this kind of treatment in respect of Bills that we have brought forward. It almost feels like an attempt on the part of Government to delay. It does not want to be seen to vote the Bill down, so it will elongate the process and hope it will almost go away. It is almost 12 months since I introduced legislation and was told we would come back to in 12 months. It does not feel as if there is the urgency that is needed on this issue. It has been discussed within these Chambers over the past two years. What is to stop another tax exile, or the same tax exile, from acquiring another radio station that currently has a licence from the State and to issue another ban on whatever publication he feels should not be allowed to give its point of view? It could happen tomorrow, yet the Government has said that it could take 18 months for something to be done about it.

I wish to make another point on a responsibility that all of us in political life share. I have noticed in the past number of years, and certainly, since the dawn of the social media age, that there have been personalised attacks on journalists from certain political quarters or supporters of certain political entities or movements. They have been trolled and abused and the abuse is often quite misogynistic. Attempts are made to assume that because a person writes for a certain publication, they are from a certain part of the country or they are related to somebody who may be involved in politics, they have a certain point of view. All of us in politics, regardless of our political party, have a responsibility to call that out. It is wrong that somebody engaging in journalism, producing copy, trying to seek the truth and giving what they believe to be a fair analysis of what is happening in these Chambers would be targeted by the supporters of any political entity here - Government, Opposition or otherwise - and be accused of being political, biased, having a political slant, or whatever. We speak regularly in these Chambers about the type of poisonous culture that we sometimes have to deal with in politics. Just as we want to encourage people into politics, we also want to encourage people into journalism and to seek that essential truth. We want to encourage that life and career. It is going to be difficult for someone to be attracted to a career in journalism if, by virtue of where they are from, the fact that a member of their family may have been politically aligned at one point or other or assumptions that can be made about them, that they will be on the receiving end of vicious abuse. We have all seen it and we cannot pretend that it does not happen. All of us have responsibility to ensure that whatever supporters we may have for our political entities online, they behave in a much more responsible fashion. I have seen some quite poisonous attempts made to silence journalists, whose job it is to analyse and report, online in the social media space. The agenda is often to ensure that they will second-guess a comment, a column or a question that they may ask of a political leader. That is wrong and we need to be mindful of that.

To be clear about the Labour Party's stance on this issue, it is an attack on democracy for somebody who has deep pockets to own a radio station and to limit those who can come on purely because of the profession that they hold or the publication that they write for. That is an attack on democracy, and Government and the Oireachtas must respond to that attack. It is not good enough to say that we can respond effectively in 18 months because circumstances have changed and this ban is no longer in place. That is not good enough. I remind people that we live in a country where two journalists have been murdered over the past 25 years. The vitriol and poison thrown in the direction of certain journalists has to be called out. It is making some people wonder why they are in the profession. It certainly is making some people second-guess whether they will go into the profession.

Finally, I wish to speak in support of Deputy Cullinane's point about the delaying tactic. Politics works best here often on evenings such as this when Government and Opposition can work constructively together. They do not get much media coverage and people are not necessarily watching in great numbers. However, some of the energy is taken out of constructive politics when a Member brings legislation forward in good faith, and rather than just voting it down or letting it move to Committee Stage and having a thorough investigation of it, the Government kicks it down the road for 12 or 18 months. As a result, the energy, intent and ethic behind the bill is lost. The Minister is just going to have to hope that multimillionaires stay out of the communications sphere and do not introduce more bans on The Irish Timesor other publications. That would be a situation that the Minister would regret.

With those comments, we support the Bill and look forward to seeing it enacted, even if it does take 18 months.

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