The Media Regulation Bill sets out aspirations that, on the face of it, one would consider to be very good. Its objectives include protecting editorial independence and journalistic sources. EMFA, from which this Bill derives, refers to ensuring the independent functioning of public service media, enhancing the transparency of media ownership, guaranteeing transparency in State advertising for media providers, boosting transparency in audience measurement for media services and so on. They all seem like worthy aspirations. Protecting the diversity of media, providing transparency around ownership and ensuring the independence of journalism and editorial independence are all things we would definitely want. However, I am concerned that this debate is taking place in a real world context. There are references in the Bill digest to removing obstacles and barriers to media organisations operating across national boundaries within the European Union, and to the importance of competition. Often it is suggested that if we have more competition we will get more media diversity, that competition is going to help to achieve all of those aspirations with which one could not but agree but is that actually the case in the real world? I just wonder about that. While they are worthy aspirations, the real world situation of media is the hollowing-out of public service broadcasting through increasing privatisation, with things that were done by public service broadcasters being outsourced to private operators in a context in which the people who are coming to dominate access to news, media and information are a billionaire class of social media owners or media magnates like Rupert Murdoch. Competition very often just leads to monopolistic control of the media on a global level by big players, the big billionaires who own media and social media. At the same time, we have our Government effectively dismantling RTÉ. I often have my disagreements with RTÉ over editorial decisions and so on. I would like to see a better balance and I would not be backward about coming forward when it comes to criticising certain decisions RTÉ makes but we have to fight very hard to protect public service broadcasting because we have far more influence and say over what RTÉ does than we have over what Rupert Murdoch, Elon Musk, Bill Gates or any of those characters do. We have far more influence because we can haul RTÉ in front of an Oireachtas committee. We can have an influence when people are getting paid, as they were, absolutely excessive salaries at the top of RTÉ. I refer here to the scandal around the salary for Ryan Tubridy and so on. We can actually do something about that and influence the situation. The sins of a small number at the top of RTÉ are now being paid for by the people who were not getting paid big salaries, the ordinary people like technicians, journalists, camera operators and all of the backroom people who actually make the thing function. They are going to suffer and the jobs that many of them did are just being done away with. Those jobs are going to be outsourced to private operators. Who has the money to engage in audiovisual and media production? Only the big players, by and large. There has been a lot of praise for the Irish film industry recently and how well it is doing and there is no doubt about our creative talent, including Jessie Buckley, Cillian Murphy, Barry Keoghan, the list goes on. There are also the technical people in animation and all the rest of it but the fact of the matter is that in the largely privatised Irish film industry nobody has a secure job. It is film-to-film, episodic work. There are no guarantees. Workers do not have any of the entitlements that people who are directly employed have, like those employed by RTÉ, for example. They do not have the income or employment security that they might have with a public service broadcaster. This is what is happening now in RTÉ to the ordinary people. Programmes like "Fair City" and probably "The Late Late Show" are going to be outsourced. We are going to give more tax breaks, with the section 481 provisions extended to the non-scripted sector. This means, for example, that American quiz shows are going to get tax breaks from the public to produce quiz shows that are ostensibly made here. Meanwhile, people who had proper jobs in the audiovisual sector in public service broadcasting are finding that their jobs are being done away with and RTÉ is being hollowed out. There is talk here of the internal market of the EU and removing barriers in order to ensure greater media diversity but the actual net result may be that we do away with public service broadcasting, everything gets outsourced and privatised and secure employment in the audiovisual sector and in the media will be slowly but surely done away with. That is what is happening. Some of the Bill's aspirations, as I said, are good. Do not get me wrong, transparency around media ownership is good but if we do not have a public service broadcaster, things are going to go in a bad direction. Public service broadcasters have an influence on how the rest of the media behaves. One of the reasons our media is better than in America, for example, is that there is still some notion of having a thing called public service broadcasting, of having an orchestra and of celebrating culture and heritage and things that may not be profitable or garner lots of advertising but which are making a contribution to society. Public service broadcasters work in the best interests of society. They celebrate our culture, heritage, arts and things that are not profitable. A deregulated, largely privatised and outsourced market is full of diversity but actually it is the diversity of Musk, Murdoch, Google and Facebook. That is not real diversity. It does not provide ordinary jobs or build up a pool of talent. Even funding for the audiovisual sector in terms of section 481 is supposed to be dependent on building up companies of scale and permanent pools of skill and creative talent. That is what it is supposed to do. Money is provided on that basis but that is not actually what is happening. What is happening is that we are doing away with the permanent pools. One of the things that RTÉ did was make documentaries that nobody else would make. It made television series that were trying to reflect Irish society and its development and evolution. It had and still has an orchestra. Will it still be there if we move in a certain direction of outsourcing and privatising everything? I do not think so. In truth, I think some people saw the scandal around high salaries, which was an outrageous scandal, as an opportunity to have a go at public service broadcasting in this country and to dismantle and privatise it through the back door. I would like to hear from the Minister about how that is not going to happen and how this Bill is going to contribute to protecting quality media, quality public service broadcasting and decent jobs and nurturing a permanent pool of creative and technical talent in media and the audiovisual sector.

Sentiment score: 0.16