I will start by saying something relatively controversial. I do not think RTÉ does a bad job; I think it does quite a good job. As a public service broadcaster, the difficulty it faces is that it is so often compared with international counterparts like the BBC, which is not perfect and which receives funding vastly beyond what RTÉ could ever expect to get in a small jurisdiction like ours. On the whole, I think it does a good job. RTÉ does a good job in the public service broadcasting space. I agree with Deputy O'Donoghue regarding how public service broadcasting should never be the voice of the Government. I do not think it is. It is more critical of the Government than perhaps the Government would be happy with, but it should not be the voice of any particular sector. I would like to see much more reporting and less commentary in the context of public service broadcasting. Too often, opinions are reported and colour what is broadcast. RTÉ does a good job in providing good news and current affairs coverage and a good overall spread of the broadcast content. That said, I welcome this important Bill which amends the Broadcasting Act and implements many of the new EU media rules under the European Media Freedom Act. While it is important to recognise the elements of the independent review of the governance and culture of RTÉ and the Report of the Future of Media Commission published in 2022, it is also important that this legislation has been brought forward. I acknowledge Shona Donnelly, who is in the Public Gallery and who is interning with me at present. She has done a lot of work analysing what this Bill does and where it succeeds. The change in governance is one of the most important things proposed. In light of what happened recently in RTÉ, we have, to an extent, got carried away with examining individual pay rather than looking at the governance issues. I specifically welcome the provisions in this Bill that will change the governance of RTÉ, public service broadcasting and the safeguards for editorial independence, which will come through the official governing body. Describing the director general as the editor-in-chief and ensuring that his or her term of office shall only last five to seven years are good things. In that context, maybe we need to separate RTÉ out as being different from other media organisations because it is in receipt of so much public funding. I also recognise the changes in transparency in respect of the commissioners within Coimisiún na Meán and the fact that RTÉ's accounts will be audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General. The difficulty with RTÉ has been less about the manner in which money has been spent - and the criticism in that regard is valid - but, rather, the changes in the appearance that perhaps what has been said cannot be relied upon. That is a problem from the point of view of public confidence. Transparency is a hugely important part of that public confidence in public broadcasting and public service media. The notion, for example, that the director general would be available to give evidence before committees is hugely important. There should not be any resistance to that; they should be available to answer questions when called upon to do so. Reviews every three years and annual reviews of the organisation's funding and performance are also important to inform and reinstate that performance. Obviously, this goes hand in hand with the disclosure of employee pay. As I said, this is less about individuals and more about the organisation. One thing that is very welcome is the scope for greater focus on the Irish language. One of the things we have seen emerging in recent years, not in the context of this legislation but with regard to the Official Languages Act, is advertising and the fact State agencies have to spend 20% of their advertising on fógraíocht trí mheán na Gaeilge. That is extremely important. Whether we realise it or not, we do notice it. We now have a situation where, if you are listening to or watching media, you will see advertising completely through Irish. That is something we did not really see before. You might have previously seen an advert that is targeted at the Irish-speaking community or that relates to an Irish-speaking product, but now it is wholesale. Irrespective of what Government programme it is or what a particular Government agency is doing, we will now hear that advertising to the tune of at least 20% as Gaeilge. That is hugely important because it normalises the existence of Irish within the media generally but, obviously, within our public service media as well. The make-up of the audience councils is really important in terms of including at least ten Irish-speaking members and at least five with Gaeltacht experience. That is progress, and we should actually be moving to increasing that 20% because I think it makes a big difference as to what we hear in media. Here is where it also makes a difference: now there is a funding stream for those involved in Irish language media production. People, particularly cainteoirí dúchais - Irish speakers - who can do that advertising and companies that are capable of doing production through Irish now have a guaranteed stream that comes into them. That is really important because it funds those companies in the longer term. It makes their existence viable where perhaps previously it would not have been, notwithstanding the presence of TG4 and its predecessor, Teilifís na Gaeilge, and indeed Raidió na Gaeltachta, which does not have the same extent of advertising in real terms. It is something that I think is a burden on presenters on Raidió na Gaeltachta. If you are presenting on most mainstream media programmes, there is an ad break where you get to put yourself together for the next segment. If you are presenting a programme on RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta, you do not have that chance; it just goes from one segment into the next. The professionalism then is also worth noting. The point I make about the importance of driving Irish language material, in terms of the presence of ár dteanga dúchais, is really important, but the point about how it drives production and capacity within the Irish language production centre is also important. That extends beyond the language to Irish producers in general. One of my real bugbears is the notion that you turn on RTÉ radio, RTÉ television or any Irish indigenous radio or television station and there is an ad being run on that station that is 100% exclusively produced for the English market - English accents, English parlance, English slang, English personalities, produced in London by people who have no concept of what the Irish market needs. When that ad is run on Irish media, it frustrates me because it is a signal that the company running the ad really sees us as being part of the English or British market. That is one thing, but worse than that, it means that the Irish voice-over artists based in Dublin, the people who do the copy, the people who put together the filming of these things in Dublin, and the jobs that are based here in Dublin providing media solutions for Irish companies, Irish people and Irish media consumers are being overlooked. If a big multinational - I will not name any companies but there are lots of them - makes its ad in London and then runs it in Irish media, it is saying not only that it thinks we are an extension of the British market but also that it does not care to give work to Irish media companies based here in Dublin and elsewhere around the country. That is a real shame, and there is an obvious responsibility on the company itself to indicate that it has enough respect to produce an ad that is dedicated to this jurisdiction. I also think there is a role for the media companies, the radio stations and the television stations to say to those companies that come to advertise with them that those ads are not made for this jurisdiction. I have raised this with media companies, and the response is understandably that they do not turn away business. The payment for those ads funds the activities of that radio station or television station. I get that. However, I do not get the sense that, at any point when an ad comes in, there is somebody in RTÉ or, indeed, any other media outlet in the country who says they think the advertiser should amend or change that ad or remake it in Ireland using Irish staff, Irish teams and Irish companies because it will land better with the people here. The problem for us is that because we also consume so much international media, particularly British media, we sometimes do not notice. If you are watching British television and then you switch to an Irish channel, you might not notice that the ad is exactly the same as the one you saw on the British channel. I just think there is a real shame within the media landscape that we cannot strike out better for Irish media companies to ensure that the content we see, hear and have to listen to is indigenous content generated here for us, by us. I do not mean that to sound in any way isolationist because the reality is that we live in a global environment, and I do not have a problem with that. However, I do have a problem with the notion that we are an extension of another media market. I think there is something being missed by media outlets here but also by the companies that are advertising, and I do not know if they are even aware of how much it can sometimes turn off an Irish consumer that the product being advertised is actually being geared towards and aimed at a different type of consumer entirely. I do not know to what extent that can be addressed within this legislation, but in the same way that the Official Languages Act prescribed the 20% allocation for fógraíocht trí Ghaeilge, is there room, perhaps, for a portion or a requirement for a portion of advertising on any station to be made, for example, in this jurisdiction? That may interfere with competition rules within the European Union, but maybe if we just said that it had to be done within the European Union, that would specifically relate to the other major English language jurisdiction in this part of the world. I started by saying that I thought RTÉ did a good job. I stand by that. I think that our news can sometimes be a small bit parochial, and I want to give a shout-out to a programme that I think is genuinely excellent. Unfortunately, it occupies only a 20-minute slot on a Sunday morning on RTÉ Radio One, and it is "World Report". "World Report" is a programme that goes around the world and uses reporters on the ground in places we do not hear very much from very often and it gives them an opportunity to set out a story that is happening in Kenya, India or Bolivia or somewhere like that that does not make the mainstream news - and, by the way, that includes print media. Particularly in an English language jurisdiction, where there is so much international media coming into our country through English, it is sometimes very difficult for consumers here to hear through that noise and see things that do not make their way into the headlines in our newspapers or notifications on our various media apps or whatever we look at online. Algorithms can sometimes kill your ability to see beyond what a particular platform thinks you should be reading. "World Report" cuts through that, and I really do not know why we could not do a "World Report" every day. On RTÉ Radio, before "Morning Ireland" starts at 7 a.m., for example, there is room there even to do one or two stories. It is an excellent programme because it also lifts us out of the parochial nature that is sometimes associated with news in this jurisdiction. I would love to see that happening. This Bill, which is concerned primarily with governance and transparency, is good legislation and I welcome it, but there is so much more we can do in terms of improving our national media landscape to ensure that it serves the people in this country but also serves them with a diet of information and media material that they will not get outside this country. Let us do better for them in that regard.

Sentiment score: 0.14