Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister, Deputy Naughten. This is my first opportunity on the floor of the House to welcome his appointment. Not only does he deserve this appointment, but I believe he will be very good in it. I do not wish to butter him up too much in advance of one or two nagging points, having known him for a long time. I believe he brings a certain skillset that will be a great asset to us at this time. He is a very independently minded person and a man with attention to detail. He is not afraid to think fresh thoughts and to launch ideas.

It was often said in previous incarnations of the Seanad that relatively few Ministers came in here with a genuine intention of being in dialogue with Seanadóirí or indeed in the other House. The newly-elected Senator McDowell and perhaps the late Brian Lenihan were among those who got deserved praise for their willingness to take ideas on the hop, engage with them and run with them if they were convincing. I hope the Minister, Deputy Naughten, will be a Minister in that tradition; he certainly has the capacity to do so. I wish him the very best.

In encouraging him not to be afraid to think fresh thoughts, I point out that the Minister takes office in a very difficult and interesting time in Irish politics not just because of what is happening in this country, but also what is happening elsewhere, obviously in the context of Brexit in particular. The Minister has many important things on his plate. He spoke about broadband and developing greater indigenous supply of sustainable energy and those are two very important issues. The progress he makes on those issues in whatever time he is given as Minister will be career defining for him as a Minister.

I am going to nag the Minister on two points, starting with one that may appear insignificant. Given that he is Minister with responsibility for communications and as a procedural matter to assist us in this House, I encourage him to be one of those who restores the tradition of bringing in copies of his speech to assist Members in following what he has to say. I have noticed lately that it is not happening as much. I am all in favour of saving the planet and cutting down on unnecessary printing. However, we do not just come in here to make our own statements. We actually come in here to listen to what Ministers have to say. The art of speech making is a rather outdated art. None of us has the concentration that we would like to have and I often find myself saying, "What did he say?" or "Did he just say that?" and wanting to check back before making my intervention. That would be helpful and he might pass the word back through Government. It is a small thing, but it is helpful to legislators.

I want to deal with broadcasting in particular. I recently gave the Minister mild criticism in the context of general praise in an interview I gave to the Sunday Independent, because of what he said about there not being, in his opinion, a significant left wing or liberal bias in the media or broadcasting. The Minister comes from a constituency that is filled with people who think very differently. I do not deny him the right to think his own thoughts or form his conclusions. However, there is a problem when politicians talk about the media. We often give out about the media when they criticise us or the things we believe in. Because the media must hold politicians to account, journalists can be unpopular with politicians. Very often politicians make rather ill-considered criticisms of the media in a generalised way. I acknowledge that.

However, as the old saying goes, "Just because you're paranoid, it doesn’t mean they're not out to get you." A person in the Minister's position must look at how Irish political culture has evolved and the issues that are neuralgic in today's society. We need to look in an honest and fresh way at the role the media play, not just in terms of how politicians are seen, but how politics itself is seen. We should consider it in the context of what has happened in Britain, where it is now fashionable to decry what experts say in order to make more emotive types of points.

Regardless of one's view on the issue, who could deny that the media were a significant player in how the debate on last year's referendum was organised? I have no doubt that many people made up their own minds in the end, but who could deny that there were not significant percentage points flowing to one side of the issue from the way media people in their droves handled that particular important social issue? Who could deny that that is not also the case on the much more important and neuralgic social issue of abortion? There are people in RTE who will privately admit that they are amazed at the groupthink among their colleagues on that issue.

For example, a study of media treatment of some of these social issues will find that when it comes to the so-called liberal position, we frequently have sycophantic facilitating questions focusing on a particular dimension of the issue. When it comes to the more, let us call it, conservative perspective, we have people being grilled. It is not an issue that can be dismissed lightly by saying there is no significant bias in the media.

We need a long hard look at how public service broadcasting operates here. No vested interest should be above scrutiny. For example, RTE is sitting on a massively valuable land bank while at the same time telling us it is strapped for money. It is seeking a protected television licence fee while at the same time it derives significant revenues from advertising although, as the Minister rightly says, it is a crowded market in terms of potential suppliers of advertising. We must not be afraid to question powerful vested interests in our society and that starts with the media, probably the most unquestioned institutional power we have today. It is diverse, but only to a degree. While it may seem like a mad thing in which to start a discussion, should RTE necessarily sit on a highly valuable land bank if one way of saving revenue would be its eventual relocation?

That might also address the often-described - sometimes exaggerated and sometimes understated - disparity or disconnect between urban and rural in our society. I come from a parish, which the Minister knows well given that he has family connections there, where RTE nearly destroyed the life and career of a man.There was reason to believe at the time, and it was widely stated, that perhaps the culture of prejudice towards faith, faith communities and clergy, contributed to the way that problem unfolded. Whether that is true there were promises at the time of new standards in regard to fairness and balance.

I would say that it remains the case that significant institutional bias exists in broadcast media in particular. The one I most concerned about is publicly funded media where people without any sense of contradiction can speak on the one hand about human rights and equality and at the same time treat in an utterly partisan fashion important social issues such as abortion. I ask the Minister not just to take my word for it. Can we have a working group to survey questions around fairness and balance in the media and ask journalists whether they think there are significant areas where bias is impacting on the quality of public debate and to look bravely but with a curious eye and intellectual honesty at the question of whether sanctions could be a part of the remedy. If a journalist or a presenter working for a public service broadcaster has a contract worth hundreds of thousands of euro which is indirectly tax funded and if he regards it as a perk of the job that he can take a sycophantic approach to somebody who shares his point of view, for example, in favour of abortion and engage in persistent and selective and tendentious and hostile questioning on those who oppose his view, can that person be sanctioned or challenged in any way? If a finding is made against him once or twice or three times by the broadcasting authority, can anything be done? Does he have to read out the apology himself? Does he have to express any personal regret about his conduct which is wasting taxpayers' money and abusing the public? Can we have a body that has genuine teeth so that when people make a complaint they do not feel that they are pissing against the wind, excuse the language?