Kevin Humphreys (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I wish to raise the issue of dementia and Alzheimer's disease. It is urgent for the Minister to meet a cross-party group as soon as possible on the matter. I acknowledge the Leader has done everything within his power to try to facilitate that.Given the workload facing and pressure on the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, I hesitate in proposing an amendment to the Order of Business. I will not do so today. I accept that the Leader has been trying to facilitate that and I ask him to continue in his efforts, because Alzheimer's disease and dementia are hidden diseases that affect so many people in this country. It is important that the HSE service plan recognises that and appoints sufficient advisers to our primary care centres to make sure families and patients access the services they need.

I have been looking back on the past year. On many occasions we raised issues concerning the national broadcaster. Concerns were raised initially about children's television, and how that was treated. It was practically done away with. Senator Norris led an all-party group addressing how RTÉ has been dealing with this House and its coverage of it, which has been disappointing. Very important points of legislation have been raised here and have not been covered. I raised the selling off of land with the previous Minister. It is very disappointing that no more than 10% of the RTÉ site at Montrose, the bare minimum, was provided for social housing. That has to be questioned. The Minister said it was up to the board and washed his hands of it.

Licence fees are another issue. While I have always been very negative about RTÉ, its coverage, its responsibility as the national broadcaster and the subvention it receives as such, the non-collection of television licence fees has had a knock-on impact on independent producers of television programming. We have seen a fall-off in investment of more than €40 million since 2008. Over recent weeks and months there have been several repeat programmes. The independent producers produce an awful lot of content for RTÉ and that has been slowly but surely reduced. If we have a public service broadcaster, it has to get the investment needed to produce quality programmes. It also has a responsibility to produce content, and reporting is a part of its public service. Senator Leyden raised the issue of independent radio and television last week.

I want to bring the Leader back to one point. Three or four weeks ago he said he would try to facilitate the Minister coming into the House to discuss the future of public service broadcasting. With what we have seen about RTÉ in the media over recent weeks, it is more important than ever that we have that conversation. We must have a conversation on policy, on how RTÉ treats its staff and on how it treats the public in its role as a public broadcaster. We have to discuss other radio and television stations and how their public content is supported through the licence fee. One issue that really needs to be addressed is the licence fee and the failure to collect it. There is a working group in the Department which is about to make recommendations. It would be timely if we had that discussion with the Minister in the House.