Labhrás Ó Murchú (Fianna Fail)

Senator O'Toole raised a relevant point on the availability of RTE throughout Northern Ireland. Whatever reasons, technical or political, existed in the past for such an inadequacy, they are certainly gone at this stage. We are all proud of RTE in so far as it adopts a balanced approach to both national and international events. I recently hosted a group from the Unionist and loyalist community in Northern Ireland. It was a convivial meeting but I was surprised that one of them admitted she had never heard of a particular county to which I made reference. That shows a ghetto mentality still exists, and one way of breaking it down is using the broadcasting service. The advantage of RTE is that it is a public broadcasting service and so does not have a conflict between profit and principle. I fully support Senator O'Toole and we should try to pursue this with both the Government and RTE.