Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and endorse what has been said about the value of public service broadcasting. I disagree with virtually nothing that has been said, although a few of the comments have been colourful. One of the major functions of public service broadcasting is to act as a counterbalance to the counter-factual news spread on social media. In keeping up standards of public education through the media, public service broadcasting has an invaluable role to play. In its description of the right to free speech the Constitution acknowledges that the media in Ireland have an invaluable role to play in educating public opinion. It is in that role that public service broadcasting cannot be allowed to be driven from the battlefield by its competitors. I am talking about Sky News and other bodies which are doing a tremendous job in attracting advertising revenue away from RTE. I do not know how many Members of this House have noticed that when one is listening to the radio, as I do at weekends in particular, a significant number of advertising slots are given to RTE to state what it has broadcast or proposes to broadcast or to State organisations to ask people to present for this or that medical check. By the look of things, the number of private sector advertisements on RTE has reduced substantially. The advertising slots are being padded with informational, charitable and cultural material to make it look as if there is still advertising being carried on stations. I strongly believe that RTE should drop its obsession with social media. It does not matter whether Mary from Rathmines, Joe from Donnybrook or whoever else it may be thinks that the last item was brilliant or unbrilliant. All of that is hugely manipulated. There is a well known routine. If the Minister goes out to RTE and bears his soul to the nation, he has people ready to phone, text or tweet immediately and say he is fantastic and it was brilliant to have him on the programme. The amount of manipulation of RTE through social media is huge. Who really cares what one person thought of the last item on a programme? If RTE has confidence in its editorial standards, it should not be constantly looking over its shoulder at the social media commentary. We know in politics how utterly unrepresentative and valueless most social media commentary on politics is, how utterly perverse a great deal of it is and how shallow nearly all of it is. The notion that RTE should have all its presenters saying, "Please tell me how I am getting on in this programme, please give me feedback", is wrong. They should have a little more confidence in their own views. The same applies to the print media. If a newspaper prints an article by Senator Ó Clochartaigh on some issue, why is it right that some eejit like me can write in something offensive about him immediately under his article and the newspaper puts that up on its website?

The Minister is grappling with the issue of the licence fee. He has run a few little balloons on iPads and other devices, and people here are concerned about An Post. The way to fund RTE is by requiring every home in the country to pay a licence fee or a sum, and the way to collect it is through the local property tax. An amount of €70 or €80 could be taken from every dwelling in this country, regardless of whether there is a television, an iPad, a broadband connection or whatever. If every dwelling paid a flat proportion of its local property tax to RTE, the cost of collecting it would be minimal, the evasion would be zilch and the capacity of RTE to know from where its budget was coming, and the public service broadcasting system generally to know from where public money was coming, would be crystal clear. We would know what 10% of the residential property tax, RPT, or whatever it is, would be in any given year.

Let us be clear about it, it is futile hoping that the current licensing system will ever become comprehensive. It is foolish to spend hours and hours agonising over whether people will be honest, dishonest, evade or whatever. It is unfair, as I pointed out to the Minister on a number of occasions, that somebody who has a house in Coolock and a caravan in Gorey is expected to pay twice the licence fee of €160. To find that money out of post-tax income requires up to €600 for people who are paying tax at the 40% rate, which includes many average industrial earners at this stage. That is unfair. Therefore, let us have a different system. Let us simply provide that a portion of the local property tax goes to a public service broadcasting fund, full stop. Then there would be no problem with people needing to run around the country, having detectors and people knocking on people's doors. The issue would be simply dealt with. The system could be extended and applied differently to hotels, guesthouses and pubs. Places of public entertainment could be charged a differential rate or whatever the Minister would want to do there. If he would want to charge a mega pub in Dublin a licence rate, which is substantially different, he could simply do that through the taxation system. However, all of this is a waste of the Minister's time, effort and his goodwill with the public because the balloon he ran on tablets, iPads and on all the other devices was a bit of a lead balloon, but I wish him well is everything he is doing.

Reference was made to the need for impartiality in television broadcasting. The point was made that fascists and racists were put out there to provoke people. If that is what is really happening, it should not be happening. Public discussion must be interesting. We cannot have everybody having the same bland views on every issue and all of us saying more or less the same thing about all issues. I agree with Senator Norris in one respect, namely, that some presenters argue with their interviewees in politics, they do not interview them. They believe it is their duty to score points off them bang, bang, bang, as if it is a boxing bout and waiting to score maximum points before the bell rings.

One of the greatest beneficiaries of the political system and the charity of politicians, collectively, is Vincent Browne on his evening programme. I know of no man who has received such support from a great number of people-----