Billy Lawless (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Leas-Chathaoirleach for selecting this matter. I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Joe McHugh, to the House to discuss this important issue.

I take my appointment as Ireland’s first emigrant Senator seriously. That mandate not only extends to the US diaspora, with which I am more familiar, but to the entire diaspora across the globe. One issue which comes up time and again with elderly members of the UK’s Irish diaspora is the continued access to RTE long wave radio service which is set to be abolished at some point in 2017. There may be many young or more digitally orientated people in RTE management who may scoff at the notion of retaining for what for them may be a feature of bygone era. However, this narrow thinking does not understand the richness RTE provides for the tens of thousands of listeners in the UK who tune into RTE long wave every single day.

There are more than 600,000 Irish-born emigrants living in the UK, with many of its older members forced out of Ireland in the 1950s with little education and no prospects of work at home. In January 2016, the Social Policy Research Centre at Middlesex University London, funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, conducted a study into some of those emigrants’ usage of RTE long wave. Up to 92% of respondents to the survey stated they listen every day or most days, with 44% listening to it in the car or another vehicle. Less than half the respondents had used a television or some form of digital device to access the radio. Unsurprisingly, it was the so-called older age groups who did not access the service on digital radio platforms on a laptop or digital TV.

Will the Minister of State consider this survey, given it was funded by the previous Government, and implore RTE management to reconsider this ageist and discriminatory cut to RTE long wave planned for 2017? Nobody is trying to halt the digitalisation of our media or impede RTE in its process of modernisation. However, RTE must be reminded of its public service remit.

The historic first state visit of Uachtarán na hÉireann to the United Kingdom in 2014 was an incredible moment for the Irish UK community, particularly the elderly who have been through difficult times for the Irish in the UK during the Troubles.Anyone watching the concerts and events held around the President's visit could see for themselves that they reconnected many Irish men and women of humble economic and social backgrounds in a way that had not been felt for many generations. This was an extremely proud moment, not just for those immigrants, but for the global Irish diaspora. It showed that this nation is taller than its borders. I ask the Minister of State what kind of message is sent to those people when three years later we turn the switch off on RTE radio, which is the daily, and perhaps only, link to home here in Ireland for so many. Thankfully, we have exited the period of austerity. It seems an extremely harsh and unfair decision for RTE to directly target some of the most elderly and vulnerable people who use the station's services. This is not what public service broadcasting is supposed to be about.