Seanad debates

Tuesday, 4 November 2003

Broadcasting (Funding) Bill 2003: Second Stage.

 

I have two specific concerns that are not to be seen as critical of RTE overall. Since I became finance spokesman for Fianna Fáil in this House, I have been concerned about the way the monthly inflation figures are covered by RTE. I complained two months ago about a broadcast that struck me as overly politicised. The Broadcasting Complaints Commission did not uphold my complaint and I accept that, but it seems to me that analysis of the statistics does not take adequate account of the contribution of social partnership. Social partnership is not visible in a fall in the price of vegetables or housing, it is spread over all the indicators. Sometimes broadcasts attribute these falls to all kinds of external factors when a central factor in our economic strength in the last year is the way the most recent social partnership arrangement has broken the potentially dangerous rising inflationary expectations.

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