Seanad debates

Tuesday, 21 June 2022

An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business

 

12:00 pm

Photo of Rónán MullenRónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to see that the meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport and Media where it was proposed to bring in representatives from RTÉ on foot of the discussion of transgender-related issues on "Liveline" is not now going ahead. Though I have often criticised RTÉ over the waste of public money and often raised questions about issues of fairness and balance, I thought it was strange that on foot of complaints about a particular programme that the joint committee would have moved to appear to haul representatives of the national broadcaster in to explain themselves. If we imagine that a Russian television station had had a debate about the merits of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and that people from that station were to be hauled in front of a committee of the Duma to be berated, we can see how inappropriate it would be for an Oireachtas joint committee to overstep the mark. RTÉ was right in its correspondence with the joint committee to seek agreement on the point that it would not be the role of the joint committee to "investigate, examine or adjudicate the content of broadcast programmes, on RTÉ or any other broadcaster". Additionally, if there is a perception of ongoing problems concerning bias, impartiality and some communities being treated differently from others, then it is, of course, appropriate for a joint committee to ask questions and to seek engagement in that regard. The knee-jerk nature of last week's reaction by the joint committee, however, was ill advised.

This does, though, raise issues concerning free speech and freedom of expression in our society. We should get back to this aspect now in the context of reports that the legislation on so-called "hate speech" is due in the autumn. I note that the Department of Justice is at pains to say there will be a high threshold for any prosecutions. That would certainly want to be the case because there is a real danger here that we will allow free speech for some people in our society, but not for others. In a healthy democracy, all sorts of points of view get to be raised and the threshold should be very high indeed before anybody can be prevented from doing so or from being in any way persecuted or prosecuted for expressing a point of view that they are willing to back up with sound argument while avoiding abuse, incitement to hatred or any kind of threatening behaviour. We must, though, always err on the side of facilitating free speech.

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