Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is an appalling mess and I am not going to go over the details of what we have heard. I welcome the work of the Oireachtas committees and the Minister's appointment of two reviews and a forensic accountant. It will be important to await the outcome of these works before we draw long-term conclusions. It is clearly important we have a robust RTÉ coming out of this, with proper protocols around how the commercial world of advertising and a body that is predominantly funded by public money must coexist. These events should also cause us to reconsider our response to the report of the Future of Media Commission, which we got last year. In that context, I think the review that the Minister is undertaking may be too narrow. The truth is that we need a strong and trusted local and national media sector. We saw how important that was during the Covid crisis. The truth is that the existing model will simply not carry us forward to deliver that for the future. The licence model is simply not fit for purpose. We all know the features of it. It depends on owning a TV. How anachronistic that is in this day and age. We know that 15% of people evade paying the licence fee, a figure is bound to rise; 10% of people legitimately avoid it; and 25% of people get it free. This is not the basis of funding of the existing public service broadcasters, let alone the much wider media that we now need to sustain. The truth also is that the forces that are constraining commercial revenue to quality media, including newspapers, local radio or public service broadcasters, are not going to be easily fixed. The decline of RTÉ revenue from €250 million to €150 million is mirrored in many of the other media outlets that are genuinely struggling. That is being driven by the cost of print, the range of choice, the switch to players and recording, the devouring of 55% of advertising revenue by online platforms and the growth of aggregators like Netflix, Spotify and so on, who deliver à la cartemusic and entertainment, not table d'hôte. Clearly, people are looking for the à la carteversion. I do not think continuing with these approaches will do it in terms of the wider media world that we need to promote. In my view, the potentially transformative elements of the report of the Future of Media Commission have not been delivered upon properly. The Exchequer funding model has been rejected, as has the call for a far broader and more powerful media commission with direct access to the Central Fund for future funding of media, a developmental mandate and a statutory evaluative framework. These have not been adopted by Government. We have also pushed down the road a strong contribution under copyright by the platforms that use so much of the content created by our local and national media but do not charge a fair return for it.

We need to see rapidly the seven potential funding streams for the future of public service content in the wider media, aside from the publicly-owned media. It is going to be vital to develop them. The present funding hiatus that we are experiencing, where all media are now depending on the Estimates process if they are to get extra public funding, is not a healthy environment within which to have a relationship between Government and media. I certainly do not pretend that this Minister or her Government will be seeking to influence media, but it is not a good situation if we are depending on the Estimates process, juggling and jostling with other priorities, to determine what can be done for media in this country. If we believe it is a strong and resilient part of our democracy, then we should have the confidence to go down the route of funding the media from the Central Fund, much like our courts are. Of course, this gives huge power to the new media commission, and there will need to be intense oversight of such a media commission should we go down that road. I can see how the traditional bean counters in the Department of Finance would cast a very cold eye on such a powerful body having direct access to the Central Fund, but I honestly believe that if we are to resolve for the long term not just this appalling mess, but are to put our media, local, national, public and private, on a course where they continue to serve citizens to a high standard, we need to bite the bullet that was offered by the Future of Media Commission.

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