Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 40:

In page 45, between lines 29 and 30, to insert the following:

“Duties to the whole community of the island of Ireland

9.The Principal Act is amended by the insertion of the following section after section 39:

“Duties to the whole community of the island of Ireland

39A. RTÉ and Teilifís na Gaeilge, as national public service broadcasters with a duty to the whole community of the island of Ireland, shall endeavour to ensure that in the event of any graphic or pictorial representation or map of Ireland that is broadcast or used in a broadcast to depict data or information for the public, every practicable effort is made to present the relevant data for the whole island of Ireland where possible, and shall always, including in cases where data or information for any part of the island cannot be depicted, present the island of Ireland as a geographical whole, maintaining the integrity of its coastline, and refraining in all cases from presenting any jurisdictional boundaries within the island as equivalent to coastline.”.”.

I understand amendment No. 40 was discussed on Committee Stage, when the Minister accepted that it would be legally possible for us to introduce this amendment. It relates to repeated instances where nearly 2 million people in the North of Ireland have been, in effect, cast into the ocean. The Monaghan and Cavan borders have been redrawn as coastline and the teddy bear that is Ireland has, in effect, been decapitated. The Minister accepted on Committee Stage that this is offensive to many people. For example, the provisions in the Bill that seek to ban the broadcast of offence and anything undermining the authority of the State are far more intrusive into the editorial independence of RTÉ and broadcasters more broadly. Surely maintaining the geographic integrity of the island is a much more basic, simple and objective task. This is about excluding almost 2 million people entitled to be part of the Irish nation from exactly that, the Irish nation as represented in maps. Whether it is on the weather showing data or pictorial representations, public service and national broadcasters should have a duty to the whole of island and its people.

See this speech in context