Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

In principle, I support this Bill, as I do the access to many of the archives we hold throughout our nation. The more access people have to archival material, the more they understand the past. I have no problem with that. However, it is a big undertaking, and as the Minister just said, it is not as simple as the passage of this Bill. I hope it gets to Committee Stage and the pre-legislative stage - it goes backwards for a while - and that we can tease out some of the issues which the Minister highlighted and other issues which need greater concentration. There is the whole question of copyright and paying residual payments to actors and all of that. There are some areas where it is even more complicated than presented.

Some people of my age might remember "The Spike" or, if we go back further than that, "Hall's Pictorial Weekly". They cannot be reshown because there are copyright issues and residuals. "Strumpet City" is another series which was absolutely fabulous. However, unless you get a private showing, which has been arranged around the country, it cannot be shown because there is an issue about the rights. People had signed away their rights for one showing and not a second one. There is that type of material, and once you give public access to it, you end up addressing that. That is why when RTÉ or any institution gives public access, it has to be limited unless the underlying issues are addressed for this kind of access. They are only examples that I have heard of. I am not sure whether "Scrap Saturday" and stuff like that is copyrighted. I am only picking the productions that I, as a politician, would be interested in seeing back to see whether they live up to their time. They probably do not. They never do.

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