Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for coming to the House and for his paper on public service broadcasting and social media regulation. It cannot be easy for the Minister to sit and listen to Senators, especially today, as the Minister has other things on is mind. It shows something about the Minister's courage and tenacity that he can sit with dignity and do this when he must face other issues later on. I know he will come through them.

I congratulated the Minister earlier for the role of David McRedmond as chief executive officer of An Post. I am absolutely thrilled that An Post is now turning over a profit. All Senators agreed because it means so much. A post office is such a communicative and engaging place for people all over the State, in cities, towns, locales and villages. Mr. McRedmond's ideas for the future with regard to community banking will elevate the place of the post office. They are so essential and very much a part of ourselves. I congratulate the Minister on this because this is a huge part of his portfolio.

I absolutely agree with Senator Boyhan on the "Oireachtas Report" programme. The Senator made a very good point about the synergies of our own Oireachtas TV and the Oireachtas communications. One aspect on which the Seanad has been very weak is communicating who we are and what we do. We expect other people to come in and communicate it, rightly or wrongly, badly or well. Senators should be far more proactive in how we communicate. I take that point.

The TV licence fee and non-payment is discussed in the pubs, clubs and bus stops of Ireland. I am interested to hear the Minister's comments about legislation on collection of the fee. How will the Minister pursue that in the future to make sure that people who have a television set and who have media in their homes are paying for it? This is very important because it gives back trust to the community that something is actually happening in that everybody else is also paying the bill.

I am delighted to see provisions for the development of local community radio and the bursaries for journalism. I come from a radio background. Radio is the most engaging, the most available, the most economical and the cheapest medium for everybody. Irish people are great radio listeners so I welcome that proposal.

Senator Warfield made a brilliant point about the pornography of social media in the way people are treated. It is about how pornographic language and pornographic images invade the whole media area. The late Neil Postman was a wonderful writer who wrote a book in the 1980s titled Technopoly. He also wrote The Disappearance of Childhoodand Amusing Ourselves to Death. When one thinks of these they go together. Neil Postman said that one of society's problems was going to be pornography and the second problem was how we were going to store all the information that we now have. He wrote of society being in a chaos or a glut of information.This is a difficult area to navigate and previous speakers pointed out aspects of the problem. I agree, however, that legislation is urgently required, although one cannot legislate for morality or what takes place behind closed doors. Young minds can be educated and I would like the national broadcaster to have more young people on radio and television. I got into terrible trouble when I stated recently that 16 year olds should not be allowed to vote. What I meant was that the kind of politics in which we engage may not be for young people. However, young minds are alive, creative and imaginative and young people should be seen on television and heard on radio. Elderly people - I am fast becoming one - are another group who we do not see often enough on panel and discussion programmes. We do not hear them much, yet they make up a large proportion of the population. It is within the gift of public service broadcasting to ensure our elders are heard.

I also agree with Senator Higgins that public service broadcasting is extremely important because it reflects who and what we are and how we see, investigate and place ourselves on our island and outside of it. It is also important for music, orchestras, language and politics. It is sad that RTÉ must sell land to survive. It must be gifted and kept alive. RTÉ has a great deal of competition and it is important it remains the core broadcaster because much of our broadcasting has been commodified. We now have the same programme repeated at the same time, with the same advertisements and providing a supermarket type view of what and who people are. Broadcasting should be individual, unique, fresh and creative, just like the Minister.

I wish the Minister luck and thank him for coming to the House. I appreciate everything he is doing across a wide divide.