Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Government's decision not to oppose the Bill. I welcome the commentary and feedback. For me, one of the clear things here is this is already done in many other countries. I appreciate what is being offered as concerns about the Bill.

I highlighted some of these. However, it would be a tragedy if we allowed them to become roadblocks. Other countries have overcome them. They are real issues and I do not mean to dismiss them but other countries have overcome them and built these kinds of archives. Other countries have done this with their public service broadcasting. It should be an inherent part of public service broadcasting. Perhaps, when writing these contracts, we should be thinking about 100 years ahead, but let us not let these legitimate concerns, which can be addressed, become roadblocks. As I have said, I look at what the BBC and the Dutch do. There is incredible work done there. I have no doubt that they too have faced these same questions about residuals, contractual clauses and so on.

While we do not have time for it now, there is a much wider conversation to be had about archives. Deputy Ó Snodaigh mentioned many archives. The Minister mentioned that this would include TG4. That is great. Let us get TG4 involved because it is an important public service broadcaster as well. The inclusion of TG4 would be a very positive thing. There is a much wider conversation to be had about archives. Should we centralise them? Are we doing enough? Are we investing properly in our archives? Are our National Archives getting the resources, support and manpower they need to do their job, which is very important? Are the Departments that are supposed to feed into the National Archives doing their job? Again, these are questions for a wider conversation.

On the financial burden, as I have said, a lot of this work is already being done. It is not that RTÉ is not doing this work. It is doing excellent work in this area. There is investment in digitisation. That is happening at the minute so I am not sure the Bill would result in a substantial extra financial burden. Current programming is made digitally and so can be very quickly worked into a digital archive. RTÉ knows the importance of this and is already investing in it. I am not sure the extra financial burden is really a barrier. There are much deeper conversations about the funding of public service broadcasting, as alluded to by the Minister of State, that we need to have first but I do not think the financial burden is a realistic roadblock. When we see other state broadcasters able to do this, we see that this cannot be used as a roadblock.

We are being presented with the idea that it is a question of access or conservation and that we cannot have both. That is giving up before we have even begun. Conservation is important but what use is an archive that nobody sees? What use is an archive if it is not accessible? We need to do both. To set it up as a question of access or conservation and to say that we cannot do both is to present a false dichotomy. Again, this should not be considered a roadblock.

On the access that is available now, since the publication of my Bill on First Stage, researchers have come out of the woodwork to express their frustration at trying to get access, the opaque nature of the system and, in many cases, the impossibility of getting that access. It is not as if we are providing access now. We really need to look at access to archives in general and access to this archive in particular.

There may be other ways of doing this. I appreciate that the Department may be cautious about creating an obligation, but all of us here could point to cases in different policy areas that show that if there is no obligation written down, what is required will just not get done. In many cases, where there is an obligation written done, it is still not done or delivered. The first step is acknowledging the importance of the archives and the good work that is already being done. Everyone in this Chamber has done that. The next step is to set that ambition to have an excellent archive that is widely accessible. I believe everyone here is in agreement on that. However, we need to put that in writing. If we do not put it in writing, there is a risk that ambition will not be achieved, that it will start to slip or that the importance of the archives will slip down because they do not comprise cutting-edge commercial material. That is the fundamental reason this needs to be in black letters, in law and in legislation.

Although very legitimate concerns have been raised, this is not the first time they have been raised. They have been successfully dealt with in other countries. Let us not see them as roadblocks. Let us work through them, make this happen and have ambition. We will only have that ambition if we put it in legislation.

I will make another point. I have very deliberately drawn up this Bill in such a way as to focus on personal and research access. I did so to expressly avoid the commercial issues. I am not trying to remove an important commercial revenue stream for RTÉ. I am trying to find a way through the very real issues of residuals and fair payment to actors for the work they have done. Those issues need to be addressed. This Bill only relates to academic research. I hope this can be teased out on Committee Stage but under the BBC's model in Britain, the material goes to one location. It is not necessarily accessible to anyone sitting in front of a computer. We will not, therefore, have the issue of an archive crashing as half the country tries to look up their granny on "The School Around The Corner" or "Hall's Pictorial Weekly". Instead, people will have to go to that place and will be able to access the archives there. That ensures protection, conservation, some of the editorial controls and standards as regards conservation, use, academic use and accessibility.

Again, let us learn from how others have done it. Let us not let these real concerns become roadblocks. Ultimately, as everyone here has said, we all share an ambition. I know that ambition is shared by the people in RTÉ. They are doing the hard work in that conservation and know better than any of us in this room the value and importance of what they hold. They have been investing time, money and energy in it. There must be recognition that this archive is incredibly important to us as a cultural, social and historical asset. We need to make it more available so that everyone can benefit from it going forward. That is an essential part of the public service remit of RTÉ. Now more than ever, we need to underline and support that public service remit.

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