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Senator Mark Daly: I welcome the Minister to the House. He has made a wide-ranging contribution and it is difficult for him to touch on every issue.
I raise a pressing issue for which the Minister’s Department is, to some extent, responsible. A 65 year old lady, Ms Teresa Treacy, has been in jail since 13 September. I ask the Minister to address that issue when he replies to the debate. The case is disturbing to anyone observing it from the outside. I would like to hear the Minister’s insight on the case.
Radio Telefís Éireann is facing a deficit of €30 million this year. In November 2010, Fine Gael proposed that the salaries of all managers and presenters should be capped at €200,000. Is that proposal being pursued by the Minister’s Fine Gael Cabinet colleagues? RTE appears to be unsustainable. Public service broadcasting is all very well but commercial broadcasters are providing the same service without subsidy. Why should RTE get such favourable treatment at enormous cost to the taxpayer? Will Fine Gael follow through on its proposal?
One fifth of customers of the national broadband service have expressed dissatisfaction with broadband speeds. Download speed and coverage are felt to be inadequate. The Minister referred to a proposed improvement in broadband service and the auction of new licences. Will there be benchmarking - a dangerous word in this House - in achieving better services? I am always sceptical of surveys that say 99% of customers are satisfied. There are always 1% who are dissatisfied.
The Minister referred to the Fine Gael NewERA document. The Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Joan Burton, in an interview on Newstalk in February last, said she thought the NewERA document contained extraordinary figures which would also involve the creation of about ten quangos. The Minister for Finance remarked, in passing, that the document was dreamt up by some person in the Fine Gael public relations office. There was a public relations add-on. I wonder if 105,000 jobs will be created.
With regard to the creation of quangos, the Government previously stated it was going to get rid of them. I welcome the Minister’s work with the energy suppliers, including the ESB, Bord Gáis and others in regard to ensuring no family or person is left without heat and light this winter or Christmas given it is predicted we will have a difficult winter.
The pay and conditions and pensions of semi-State agencies, including the ESB, are unsustainable. I heard one of the union leaders, Mr. Jack O’Connor, defending his earnings. He is no James Connolly given he is earning €100,000 per annum. Union leaders are trying to defend the indefensible at a time when the vast majority of people, the 400,000 people unemployed and those in receipt of social welfare benefits, have to pay enormous electricity and gas bills. I accept there have been increases owing to the cost of oil and gas. However, pay is a big issue.
I would like to hear the Ministers views on fraccing, which is a concern in the northwest. There have been a number of studies on this. President Obama has set up a committee to examine the issue. Also, the French Government has put a moratorium on fraccing and the EU is looking at it. In the US, Maryland, New Jersey and the City of Buffalo have all banned fraccing because of a fear of water contamination. I would be concerned if we were to proceed without full knowledge of the possible downsides in this regard. Once water is contaminated it remains contaminated forever. I would like to hear the Minister’s view on that point.
Deputy Pat Rabbitte: Senator Daly raised the question of broadband and the inadequate speeds in certain parts of the country. That is true; however, after years of being disadvantaged by the manner of the privatisation of Telecom Éireann and the subsequent rip-offs at different stages, a great deal of progress has been made in recent years. By comparison to other countries, we are not doing that badly. A broadband service is available and exceptional service is available to large enterprises. There is a problem with speed and bandwidth in parts of rural Ireland. Senator Barrett raised the observations of the Comptroller and Auditor General and, in fairness to the Government that made the decision on the national broadband scheme, I think the Comptroller and Auditor General misunderstood what was being attempted. In other words, the national broadband scheme was an intervention by the State where the market had failed to deliver a broadband service. It was procured in the usual way in order to serve local electoral areas. It is not really fair to say that X million euro was spent on it. If one divides the number of people who have linked up to it into that X million, one gets a per-household cost. That distorts the picture. All we can do is to provide access; if a great many people do not want to take it up, we cannot go out with a whip and oblige them to. That is what happened here, and it is salutary. The policy up to now has been that the State will intervene where there is market failure. That may not be an adequate response in the context of accelerating change. However, the task force I chair is considering next-generation networks and so on. For people who say we must roll out a superhighway to every door, which was implicit in what Senator Ó Clochartaigh said, it is salutary to recall this. First of all, it is not feasible in the current environment. The commitment would cost the State in the order of €2.5 billion, and that kind of money is not around. However, if it was around, I am not sure the take-up would be at anything like that level of connectivity. The purpose of the task force is to compile a report that will attempt to map the country based on the contribution that can be made by the private telecommunications companies. The black spots will then be a challenge to the Government in terms of how it proposes to tackle the areas that are disadvantaged for reasons of topography, distance or whatever.
One or two contributors implied that broadband is delivered only over cable. In fact, broadband is delivered over a number of platforms - it could be mobile wireless, fixed wireless, copper cables or fibre-optic cables. We are making progress in that regard, although I would like to see a greater degree of uptake, especially by SMEs, than is the case at present. However, that is perhaps another day’s discussion.
Senator Daly raised the question of salaries at RTE. I do not agree with Senator Crown’s contention that this Department is the most important, but there are one or two things within it that are important. However, whenever I try to address these, somebody will ask me, “What about Pat Kenny’s salary?” or “How much is Marian Finucane being paid?”. What am I supposed to say? The fact is that the ordinary staff at RTE were the first out of the traps in taking pay reductions in the current crisis. I have made plain to the new director general, Noel Curran, that we cannot go on running an overdraft in RTE. As a result, he has embarked on a programme of redundancies that I understand is oversubscribed. I do not know how many people will unfortunately feel obliged to leave the employment. There are serious cutbacks at RTE. This is not exceptional; all Senators, including Senator Daly, reckon it is worth a line in the Evening Herald. However, the personalities, or celebrities - I do not know what you would call them - are on commercial contracts. I do not have the power to intrude in a commercial contract, but the director general has made plain that when they are up for revision, the profligate years will be over.
Senator Mark Daly: The Minister might encourage his Fine Gael colleagues to encourages the capping of their salaries at €200,000 as they said they would in the run-up to the election.
Deputy Pat Rabbitte: Right, I will, of course, be delighted to talk to them. The point is... that the profligate years are over.
Senators Daly and Barrett raised a point about the cost base in the energy companies, and Senator Daly raised explicitly the issue of pensions. I must say that the cost base is an issue. There are negotiations currently under way between the management of the ESB and the group of unions, the purpose of which is to get 20% off the cost base by the middle of November - I think the deadline is 20 November. Those discussions are proceeding apace.
I only learned the word “fracking” a few months ago and I am amazed how informed everybody is about it. It would appear that general knowledge has been raised by a horror movie that has been hawked around town halls about the dangers of hydraulic fracking. We have to learn more about it. If people are concerned we have to take their concerns on board. It is wrong to say, as has been said in some parts of the country, that there is fracking in the Lough Allen Basin. There is not. Some desktop surveys are being carried out and, as far as I can find out, they are not a threat to anyone.
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