Colm Brophy (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)

I thank the Deputies for their contributions. As the Minister, Deputy O'Donovan, stated at the beginning of the debate, the assignment of the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General as auditor of RTÉ has broad support across the House. It is one of the key recommendations of the expert advisory committee on governance and culture in RTÉ chaired by Professor Niamh Brennan. The programme for Government is clear that legislation is required to ensure the corporate governance model in RTÉ is open, transparent and appropriate to its public service mandate. As the Minister outlined, this goes further than the assignment of the Comptroller and Auditor General. The general scheme of the broadcasting (amendment) Bill, which was published last month, sets out a range of corporate governance and regulatory reforms, including strengthening the role and the duties of the boards of RTÉ and TG4, and the accountability of both directors general to their boards.

With regard to the role of the Comptroller and Auditor General, there are two substantive differences between the general scheme and the Bill before the House. First, the general scheme provides for the express accountability of the director general to the Committee of Public Accounts. We can all attest to the value of the work done by the committee to hold RTÉ to account in the summer of 2023. It is important there is no doubt about the responsibility of the directors general as persons accountable to appear before the Committee of Public Accounts to discuss both the annual financial statements of the public service media providers and, crucially, the value-for-money matters.

The second key difference between this proposed Bill and the general scheme is that the latter provides the RTÉ board with the authority to appoint a regulated private sector audit to carry out an annual audit in addition to that of the Comptroller and Auditor General. Given RTÉ's still large percentage of commercial income, this is an important consideration. More broadly, the general scheme is wider in scope than the Bill, addressing not only corporate governance but also the way in which the independent regulator, Coimisiún na Meán, assesses the performance of the public service media providers and makes funding recommendations to the Government. For example, under the proposed reforms RTÉ and TG4 will no longer set their own performance commitments. Instead they will be identified by Coimisiún na Meán. This is an important measure to promote accountability.

The national counter-disinformation strategy published last month clearly sets out the challenges to our democracy posed by disinformation. In light of these challenges, trusted public service media producing independent factual and impartial journalism is more important than ever. As we saw in July 2023, that trust can easily be lost. One of the key objectives of the general scheme is to create a public service media that is trusted and transparent. It is intended to copper-fasten and to underpin many of the reforms already under way in RTÉ, which have been led by a new team at board and executive level.

The best approach to reforming public service media is in as comprehensive and cohesive a manner as possible. The general scheme achieves that. Therefore, while agreeing with the Deputies' intentions, I am of the view that the Bill should be declined a Second Reading and that we should instead work together to pass comprehensive reforming legislation.

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