Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It was shown after I was born but it was definitely recorded before I was born. It was shown into the eighties; there is no question about that. Some of us are destined for these types of careers from an early age.

There is no question of the importance of archives and preserving and conserving the wealth of content which public service broadcasters produce. It is the history of the State and our society in audio and audiovisual form and provides us with records of what was pertinent at various times in our history. You would be very hard pushed to find a piece of content that is not of significance to at least one person, family or organisation, to say nothing of the wider historical value of that content. So many great moments have been captured by our public service broadcaster. The commentary on Ireland's famous World Cup penalty shootout win over Romania is already available on the RTÉ archives website, as is Sonia O’Sullivan’s silver medal at the 2000 Olympics. The first-ever mention of sport on RTÉ dates from August 1926, in reference to the Irish rugby team taking on France the following January. I think this is also available in the archives. Without the valuable archiving work undertaken by our public service broadcasters, historic sporting moments such as these might not be available for us to watch right now or could potentially be lost to time. In looking ahead, it is also important to value the past. In the archives will be found thousands of hours of historic moments that our public service broadcasters have captured.

The Minister, Deputy Martin, highlighted some very important projects, which RTÉ is already working through and which are vital. We must first preserve and conserve the content. We have to ensure historic moments that are captured only on tape or acetate can be digitised and preserved. It is not only about the preservation but future-proofing the preservation. Having the right to access content is no good if the content is not preserved. As the Minister said, there are other challenges that need to be considered in this context.

The implications that this Bill would have regarding copyright legislation and contractual obligations must also be considered. It is crucial we do not impinge on the rights of the intellectual property holders or do anything that might negatively impact or void existing contractual arrangements. It would be improper if the expansion of access to archived content resulted in an impact on rights owners or on the income people get from their rights. Of course, those rights do not last forever either. As the Minister, Deputy Martin, has already laid out, RTÉ already provides free access to a considerable amount of archived content through its website. New content is published daily and specially curated collections are also available for free. The significant archiving and digitisation project that RTÉ has under way ensures available archiving resources are focused in such a manner that the maximum amount of content of wider public interest is preserved and made available for the benefit of all.

In short, the principle of this Bill is commendable, but there is a significant amount of work to be done with regard to archives and the preservation of content. It is perhaps better for us to make sure that these improvements are progressed further before we change the legislation relating to archives. At the very least, we need to make sure all these important issues are fully considered. I welcome the discussions that will ensue from the passing of this Bill to the next Stage of the legislative process. I thank everybody for their contributions.

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