When the debate on this Bill was adjourned I was about to examine the proposal to establish a broacasting complaints commission under section 4.
I welcome in principle the idea of a broadcasting complaints commission but I join with the other Senators who criticised the cumbrous and bureaucratic structure of this proposed commission as set out in section 4.
Unfortunately the Minister did not give the House any background details of the number and nature of complaints handled by the present complaints advisory committee which he established last year. The only reference to this body in his Second Reading speech was a brief reference in passing when he said:
This system seems to have worked well and the commission provided for in the Bill is to give a statutory basis for this solution.
As I say, I have no objection in principle to having a complaints advisory committee set up on a statutory basis, but I think this proposal is unnecessarily top heavy in achieving that desirable object. It contains certain provisions which I do not at all welcome, such as that contained in subsection (2) which reads:
The Commission shall consist of a Chairman and not less than two other members who shall be appointed by the Government.
This suggests that it could grow to quite a large body, as there is no restriction on the number of members of this body, and these members shall be appointed by the Government and may be removed only by resolution passed by both Houses.
Paragraph (7) provides:
There shall be paid to members of the Commission such remuneration (if any) and allowances (if any) as the Minister, with the consent of the Minister for the Public Service, from time to time determines.
Again this gives one the idea of a very substantial body with the possibility of fairly full-time people on it who would require remuneration and allowances. This can only be justified if the circumstances warrant it. Subsection (13) reads:
The Minister for the Public Service should assign to the Commission such officers and servants as in his opinion are necessary to enable it to perform its functions.
It would appear, therefore, that the proposals for a broadcasting complaints commission would envisage a body which would require a team of civil servants to help them discharge their functions, once again giving an image of a very bureautic structure. We must be very careful in this respect, because the financing of this body will come out of the licence fees, as provided for in section 9, paragraph (a) (iii) of which the Minister will deduct:
the amount of a grant or grants made by the Minister under section 18A of the Principal Act (inserted by section 4 of this Act),
Therefore the more money that is spent on that body the fewer resources will be available for programmes on RTE. There is a very real need for restraint in this matter in establishing a broadcasting complaints commission on a statutory basis.
However it is in relation to one of the functions of the commission that I have the gravest disquiet; in fact this is perhaps one of the most invidious proposals in this Bill, that is, the proposal that the complaints commission and the Minister would have a function in relation to the internal code of the authority.
When I began my contribution to this debate I said that there were certain provisions which I would be opposing specifically. I have already dealt in detail with section 6, relating to open broadcasting. This is another provision with which I take substantial issue and which I hope will be excised from the Bill during the debate. The provisions in question are under section 18b of the Bill which provides:
Subject to the provisions of this section, the Commission may investigate and decide any of the following complaints—
Then paragraph (e) reads:
(e) a complaint that a programme broadcast by the Authority and so specified contravened a code to which this paragraph applies,
In order to understand that provision one must go through this highly technical section until one comes to subsection (13) (a) which provides:
Where a code is drawn up by the Authority governing standards and practice for programmes (apart from advertisements) broadcast by it, the Minister may, if he thinks fit, after consultation with the Authority, give a direction in relation to the code, and in case the Minister so gives a direction he shall, as soon as may be, inform the Authority of the direction.
Paragraph (b) provides:
The Minister may, after consultation with the Authority, cancel a direction given by him under this subsection, and in case the Minister cancels a direction given by him under this section he shall, as soon as may be, inform both the Commission and the Authority of the cancellation.
This is a new and, in my view, quite unwarranted power which the Minister is seeking, a new function for the complaints commission and a new power to himself to issue codes in relation to either the existing or the future internal functions of the authority. This is both an unnecessary provision and one which runs counter to the whole basic principle behind the Bill, which I welcomed—the reinforcement of the independence of the authority: that they are an independent authority, that they have a function as public trustees, that they have duties imposed on them including the maintenance of impartiality. Yet here we have a provision for a completely new encroachment on the executive, on the internal codes of the authority.
I would have the strongest objection to any such proposal. I think it would substantially erode the authority's present responsibility in the field of programmes and that it is contrary to the basic principle behind the establishment of an independent authority. I would hope the Minister would be prepared, in the light of the criticisms made by the various Senators who have contributed, to bring in a much simpler version of his complaints commission on the basis of what is a realistic workload, of establishing a complaints commission to act as a body to scrutinise and take up unanswered complaints by members of the public.
One of the functions of the complaints commission is in relation to the duties this Bill would place on the authority prohibiting them from unreasonably intruding on the privacy of the individual. I view that provision as placing a statutory duty on the authority which, if the authority are not prepared to carry it out, might give rise to damages to an individual who had been unreasonably intruded upon, who would have recourse to the courts and get damages rather than go through this complaints machinery where there is no power in the commission either to impose any sanction or to award damages.
I welcome the fact that a commission of this sort will be required to report annually. This is one of the advantages of giving them a statutory basis. The present advisory committee have not got a statutory obligation to report and we do not know the extent of their present workload. I hope the Minister in his reply will give some information on this aspect.
One other section which I should like to refer to in detail is section 17, relating to programming. To my mind the explanatory sentence at the side is deceptive. It refers to "Regulation of local programmes for distribution on cable systems". If you examine with care the actual provisions of that section it seems to me to be the regulation of the distribution of cable systems. I think that at this time in relation to cable television and the enormous potential of it, we should be going further in a Broadcasting Authority Bill than providing for the regulation of distribution through licence by the Minister.
The whole idea of cable television is the major growth area in relation to television. It has immense potential and could provide very creative and welcome opportunities for local community programming on the basis of using closed circuits. In this Bill we should be thinking ahead as to how to regulate standards of local programmes. Though I would require more information before I could be sure this would be the right solution, I would be personally strongly in favour of local control of local programmes, of having democracy operated in the real sense at local level and not to try to centralise local programmes.
Though it is important to regulate the distribution of local programmes on cable systems, I do not think this section really touches on the whole issue of cable television and the potential of this type of communication and the impact it could have on local communities. Therefore, I would welcome more details from the Minister on this aspect and some indication of his thinking on the matter.
Finally, because I have already had a generous opportunity of making clear my views on the Bill, I should like briefly to return to what I consider to be the major key issue in the Bill, that of the future of television in Ireland and what is to happen in regard to the second TV channel. It is clear that the primary function of a second channel is to redress the unfair balance of geography, the unfairness of the situation that part of the country is excluded from the advantage enjoyed by the other densely populated part of the country because of its geographic proximity to Britain and the fact that it can avail of multichannel viewing.
I come back again to the Minister's obvious preference for BBC 1 as the second channel to be rebroadcast under the present proposal in section 6. Having thought about the matter since we debated the Bill last, there are various problems posed by this proposal. If BBC 1 were licensed by the Minister to be the broadcasting service in the Republic on the second channel, RTE would be faced with very serious consequences. First, it is obvious that public money would have to be invested in the network facilities for broadcasting BBC 1 and a substantial sum of public money would have to be spent annually on acquiring programmes rights. These moneys would come from whatever would be the total resources made available to finance broadcasting in the Irish community. Therefore the funds available to finance broadcasting and the resources available to RTE would be diminished accordingly or would not be enlarged to the same extent because there would be this further cost from the total pool.
Secondly, RTE would have the serious problem of being faced with competition from a broadcasting service which is designed to compete. The development of BBC 1 has been the corporation's answer to commercial broadcasting in Britain. It has been tailored and directed to be competitive and this is being backed by all the skill and talent which the BBC have at their disposal. The object is to secure the largest possible slice of the British audience.
Because they have the advantageous position of a two-channel service, the BBC are able to discharge their public function as well as competing for the largest audience possible. It is highly debateable whether RTE, working from much smaller resources, would ever be able to win in a straight battle for audience against the BBC. One must be aware that there are only two options for RTE if BBC 1 is to be rebroadcast in Ireland and to be effectively a second channel. I have already dealt at some length with the first of these options, which is to enter into direct competition with the BBC. Undoubtedly a national service cannot go into direct competition with a basically commercial competitive service such as the BBC without losing or having to shed some of their public service obligations. It is not reasonable to envisage that RTE could have, for example, farming or education programmes or programmes in the Irish language at peak times and compete with BBC 1 during those periods. Inevitably, there would be a tendency to cut back on virtually all serious broadcasting. Apart from the capacity to compete in terms of finance—undoubtedly, the BBC have much greater resources than are available to RTE—there is also the necessity to compete in terms of talent and skill and these assets are much fewer here than in Britain, partly because many of our talented actors have emigrated and partly because the pool from which they are being drawn is so much smaller. If, for example, RTE were to compete in the field of light entertainment, from where would they get these programmes? Would they buy them at, presumably, high rates from ITV or would they buy American entertainment programmes and also endeavour to mount some such programmes of their own? With the resources available to them could they compete with the vastly greater resources of the BBC? Therefore the contest would seem to be a most unequal one from every point of view —finance, manpower, the obligation on RTE to provide a national service and so on. It is very difficult to see how RTE could compete on any sort of favourable terms.
The second option and, in my view the only other option, is for RTE not to compete. This means that RTE would have to accept their role as a second service, as a minority channel, approximating in some respects to BBC 2 in Britain. In other words, they could decide to discharge to the full extent their public service obligations without paying attention to the size of the audience viewing their programmes and without trying to attract a major audience.
The effect of this would be very serious in regard to RTE's capacity to earn revenue from advertising because the advertising would not be forthcoming if RTE were not drawing major audience rating. It is arguable and an important consideration that RTE, as a second channel of this nature, might hold more of an audience because of their being a national product. A significant proportion would view RTE because they would be providing a national programme with which the audience could identify, but it is difficult to see how that size of audience could be more than an average of 20 per cent on a regular basis of the viewing public.
I have read some of the comments made at the time when the BBC had the option either of entering direct competition with ITV or of becoming a second channel, of becoming the cultural channel in Britain. That was before the division between BBC 1 and BBC 2. The BBC rejected forcefully the argument that broadcasters cannot voluntarily abandon the service they provide to a major audience. In a sense there is no doubt that in the long term a service commanding only a small section of the viewing audience would lose, first, the respect of the public and, secondly, the capacity to draw on public money.
I repeat a point made earlier, that is, that it is very difficult to see how any Government, however well intentioned, would have the political will to support a minority programme not holding more than 20 per cent of the audience. Having had an opportunity to reflect on the implications of rebroadcasting BBC 1 here on a second channel as a policy decision, I have concluded that the implications for the national service would be extremely serious. This is a situation about which we should think much more deeply and with much more information at our disposal. It is a matter that I would like to see deferred rather than that it would be decided on in this Bill.
I should like to see section 6 being withdrawn and the whole question reconsidered because this is one of the most important matters to come before the Oireachtas for many years.
As a final comment on this aspect, there is substantial merit in the original perspective in which the Minister was considering his concept of open broadcasting, namely, the idea that television could make a very important contribution to a better understanding among people of this country, North and South, because we do not know enough about the life style, habits, customs or even humour of the people of the North and they do not know enough about such characteristics so far as we are concerned. The result of this has been suspicion, prejudice, bigotry and the tragedy of this country. That basic idea should not be lost although the reality of it appears not to be possible and I say "the reality" because it is clear that in the present proposal for rebroadcasting BBC 1 there is no element of reciprocity, that RTE would broadcast in Northern Ireland. Despite the fact that it is not possible to achieve the full idea of a liberal and free exchange of programmes and viewing between the two parts of this island, and indeed in the islands generally, it should be possible in whatever scheme for the second channel comes forward eventually to incorporate the very positive idea that the programmes which originate in Northern Ireland, whether BBC or UTV, programmes which originate there—current affairs, news, farming programmes or whatever they may be, programmes involving local people, showing their attitudes and viewpoints—should be rebroadcast on the second channel or rebroadcast in Ireland on one or other of the channels depending on how the overall scheme would be structured.
In that context I tried to make some inquiries about the proportion of programme services coming from Belfast, whether BBC or UTV or home-produced, and I was not able to get an entirely satisfactory answer on this. I am sure the Minister would have much better resources than I would have and therefore I would welcome some clear figures on the proportion of home-based Northern programmes which are broadcast either on BBC Northern Ireland or on UTV because it is my understanding that it is a relatively small proportion and that a much more significant proportion is made in either Manchester or London or indeed, probably, Hollywood. Therefore, in talking about open broadcasting in the sense of programmes coming from Northern Ireland one must realise that quite a small proportion of these programmes is actually home produced in Northern Ireland and it would be possible to have these programmes rebroadcast.
I think there would be a very real possibility of having specific programmes from Northern Ireland which are home-produced in the North rebroadcast here and have reciprocity at the programme level rather than at the programme service level where you open up your airwaves in that sense. There is a very real value there and that value should not be lost by Senators who object to the idea of opening up the airwaves to the foreign broadcasting service which could rebroadcast as the second channel in this country.
I wanted to have an opportunity of expressing a view on this because I look forward to the Minister's reply to the viewpoints he has heard expressed on this question which I think is a very fundamental one in this Bill. I should like to conclude by again thanking the Minister for bringing this Bill into the Seanad. I regard it as one of the most important Bills to come before the Oireachtas for a considerable time. I am glad that in this House we have had the opportunity of examining it before it goes before the Dáil and I hope the Minister will have benefited from the debate in this House.
