In the Seanad on 4 November 2003, speaking on the 2nd Stage of the Broadcasting (Funding) Bill 2003, I said:

I welcome this Bill which is a further instalment in the ongoing national debate on public service broadcasting.

As far as commercial broadcasters are concerned, one of the great strengths of what is now being proposed, is that it gives them an incentive to broadcast programmes they would not otherwise tend to. This could also be made a condition of the broadcasting licence in the first place in order that they could leaven the lump of their commercial offering with, other, less crowd-pleasing programmes. There is room for both approaches - the carrot and the stick. I hope this new approach to funding will not encourage commercial broadcasters to think that they have no additional public service responsibilities except under this scheme.

I am aware that this Bill is enabling legislation and it will be up to the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland to devise a detailed scheme for the Minister's approval. In an area like broadcasting, it is impossible to forecast what will and will not work. There must be room for a certain amount of learning as we go along. I am not sure if there is sufficient flexibility in the Bill to allow subsequent changes in the scheme approved by the Minister. If there is not, then we can look at it on Committee Stage.

The exact basis of the funding for the programming that will be supported is not spelled out in this Bill. It is easy to overlook the fact that a broadcaster incurs two kinds of costs in creating public service broadcasting. The first is the actual cost of making the programme itself. However, this is not the end of the matter. In arriving at the total cost for the broadcaster, the income foregone by broadcasting that particular programme, rather than a popular one that can raise more advertising revenue, must be taken into account.

This is an issue since the Bill specifically provides that the programmes funded be broadcast at peak viewing or listening times. I approve of that proviso. Otherwise, we will be paying good money to have programmes aired when half the country is asleep, a little like "Oireachtas Report". However, by insisting that they go out at peak times, we are putting a cost on the broadcasters. If they are not recompensed for that cost, the incentive to compete for this funding will be greatly reduced, if not removed altogether. Under this scheme, we are paying to make things happen that would not otherwise happen. We have to make sure that sufficient money is paid to the broadcasters.

One of the more welcome aspects of this scheme is the opportunities it will create for independent production companies, as commercial broadcasters will outsource the actual production of such public service programmes. I expect that the broadcasters will be inundated with new programme suggestions from independent producers. This is exactly as it should be. The independent production sector is one that we want to encourage as much as possible. It must be remembered that after the broadcaster has paid the production company for the work, something must be left over for the broadcaster to make it worth its while to give up the valuable air time for the programme. It is vital that in drawing up the scheme, the BCI allows for this factor.

If it does not, all the money will go to RTE because it would be the only broadcaster looking for them. There is hardly much point in passing an Act of the Oireachtas and setting up an elaborate scheme, if it only results in RTE getting back the 5% of the licence fee that was taken away from it. There will be no problem in getting RTE to apply for the funding. The main problem is to prevent it from drawing on the fund to make programmes it should make anyway. I term this the "lottery effect". We know how much former Government spending was diverted to lottery funds. While this was always denied, we all recognise it happened.

Public service broadcasting is at the heart of this issue. However, the actual range of programmes set out in section 2 of the Bill is a good deal narrower than would be covered by any normal description of public service broadcasting. In particular, there is a specific exclusion of programmes relating to news and current affairs in section (2)(2)(d). I have no problem in excluding news, but I question the wisdom of excluding current affairs from the scheme's remit. One of the major merits of public service broadcasting lies in programmes of an investigative nature. These are the programmes that tend not to be made because doing so properly is inherently expensive. The long-term, in-depth research needed for investigative documentaries is precisely the activity that tends to be squeezed out of the agenda of commercial broadcasters. However, from a national point of view, such programmes are extremely valuable to the point that they are a necessary part of democracy. Is it possible to ring-fence some of the fund to support community broadcasting? Throughout the Bill, the word "community" is linked with the word "local". In some cases, it states "community or local" and in others, "community and local". However, community can be different from local. For example, FM104, a Dublin radio station, is a local one. However, community, in my understanding, refers to a not-for-profit community medium. We should be encouraging that community link in broadcasting.

While the Bill is very worthy of support, before coming back to us on Committee Stage, I urge the Minister to remove the exclusion of investigative programmes to which I referred earlier. Doing so will greatly improve an important measure that I have pleasure in welcoming. On that basis, I commend the Bill to the House.