Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

This has been a useful debate. On the policing issue, it must be acknowledged we got the foundation blocks of our State right. Michael Staines, the first Garda Commissioner, stated, "The Garda Síochána will succeed not by force of arms or numbers, but on their moral authority as servants of the people". This has served the Garda as a guiding direction for the past 80 years.

Senator Eoghan Harris spoke about the founding members of RTE, such as Jack White, and the culture that was imbued there from the start. When the decision to set up the television service was made, a Government commissioned report by experts stated it should not be a State broadcaster. The politicians decided otherwise.

The State has been well served by this decision. Gunnar Rugheimer, one of the first controller of programmes at RTE, said it needed to hold a mirror up to society and allow it to understand the complexities, beauties and wonders that exist in it. Those early pioneers set an ethos that served the State well in broadcasting.

We were similarly well served in the 1980s by the decision to have an independent commercial broadcasting sector. Local radio works and benefits its communities. Many station owners have told me that when they started off they just wanted to broadcast wall-to-wall music. However, they were forced by a political decision and a regulator to have some local serious news content between programmes. Many of them found this was their greatest asset. It is something that people want to listen to because they can relate to and trust it.

Deputy Michael D. Higgins deserves praise for setting up TG4 in the 1990s and the ethos he brought to it. Of concern to us should be his speech at a recent Oireachtas committee on constitutional reform at the end of February expressing concern about the nature of recent broadcasting of the political system, echoing Senator Eoghan Harris. He was critical of a particular programme which has been degrading politics. When I spoke to him about it informally, he told me that most of the time we cross the line between supposed transparency and voyeurism. One sees that with some supposedly undercover investigations that become voyeuristic.

Senator Eoghan Harris believes there has been a change in standards in the past 20 years. Is it possible it has arisen from competition? As there are so many channels available and the challenge of new media, chasing ratings has become a fact of life in this sector. People working in the industry are concerned about their incomes and revenue and there may be pressure on them, therefore, to chase ratings.

The establishment of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland is at a time of an important transition in media, particularly because of the development of the Internet. It has implications not just for broadcast media but for print. There is often an overlap with print and broadcasting media having websites. The competition between them is having an effect on their business models.

The Government needs to consider seriously its public policy response to this transition. The first priority is to ensure fairness in the media. I liked Senator Eoghan Harris's point that sometimes one cannot be impartial but one can be fair. We also need a diversity of local content in broadcasting. I recall listening to a programme on Cork local radio about guitar lessons to prisoners in Cork Prison. Everyone of them was like a new John Spillane. While the programme would not have got huge ratings, the people on it were treated with respect and anyone listening to it would have been inspired.

Accuracy is also important. There is a difficulty with the speed afforded by instant communication through Twitter. For news editors who may need to get the story out first, do they have time to question sources for accuracy? We must see how we can protect the qualities that have existed in our public and independent broadcasting sectors. Today's debate was useful in that regard. I hope some of the points are carried somewhere because this House is the right place for us to consider these matters.

I look forward to the debate on free-to-air sports broadcasting. We must examine the social implications of it. Do we want sports to be only available to the more well-off houses rather than the poor? Do we want parts of the country to have good access to sporting events while others do not? These are the patterns I see and which inform my thinking as to what we designate as free-to-air.

One of the points Deputy Michael D. Higgins made to the Oireachtas constitutional reform committee was about empowering Parliament. The recent work of the Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, in picking members for the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, was an example of this and was very useful.