Mary Ann O'Brien (Independent)

I welcome the Minister. Like others, including my Independent colleagues, I am concerned about the growing availability of images and movies depicting the exploitation and physical and sexual abuse of children on the Internet and other evolving technologies. It is difficult to comprehend why legislation is not yet in place requiring Internet service providers, ISPs, to block immediately and ideally remove at source child pornographic and abusive content that is illegal under Irish law. Child pornography site blocking has been advocated by the Garda and Interpol and is being debated in Europe in the form of a proposed directive on combating child pornography and the sexual exploitation and abuse of children. I urge the Minister to be mindful of the children's rights dimension of his mandate and to work closely with his Cabinet colleagues to ensure that the "best interests of the child" principle is the primary consideration in all forthcoming legislation affecting children.

We can scarcely have a greater responsibility than to protect children and their rights, safety and innocence. In the ongoing absence of appropriate filtering or blocking of such images and movies depicting the exploitation and physical and sexual abuse of children on the Internet, does the Minister think the best way to advance dealing with the issue is through legislation and if so will he outline to the House what legislation he intends to introduce?

I will move on to another matter, and the Minister will be glad to hear I will not take up ten minutes. In these extremely tough times, we know it makes sense to seek mergers of various State-funded bodies. However, any such action should be carefully evaluated to ensure these achieve great savings while remaining totally effective. With this in mind, I note the recent press release of 28 July which stated the Minister for Arts, Heritage and Gaeltacht Affairs, Deputy Deenihan, welcomed a new report on the future of the audiovisual industry. The report, Creative Capital: Building Ireland's Audiovisual Creative Economy, identifies the Irish audiovisual sector as a pillar of Ireland's creative industries and a major opportunity to deliver growth and jobs to the Irish economy in the coming five years. CRAOL, the network of community radio throughout the State, launched an interesting response to the assertions in the report from PricewaterhouseCoopers by pointing out that while the proposal built around acquiring the broadcasting funds currently administered by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland may be cost neutral it is not cost-value neutral.

A decision to move the fund towards a small number of audiovisual producers will remove it from a much larger number of citizens using the resource for employment, creativity and the vital fuel for local community building. Furthermore, the report claims on growth and employment are entirely aspirational, provide no figures for assessment and should not be a cause for precipitous action. Significantly, the report seeking the transferral of this fund to the audiovisual industry makes no reference whatsoever to the vibrant Irish commercial and community radio sector.

On the community media front, every week 2,000 community radio volunteers and more than 100 staff engage with an estimated 120,000 listeners in 22 fully licensed community stations with a further 40 community stations at various stages of development throughout the country. This is a significant and growing media sector using the sound and vision scheme for development purposes as envisaged by the 2008 Broadcasting Act. CRAOL makes the point that logically, a broadcasting fund should be administered by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland as it is best placed to have a more strategic overview of the media sector as a whole than would the Irish Film Board. If the aim of the report is to establish a single content funding agency then, as the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland under its sound and vision scheme already funds indigenous film, would it not be more logical that the Irish Film Board be subsumed into the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland?