Report on Pre-Legislative Scrutiny of the Revised General Scheme of the Broadcasting (Amendment) Bill: Motion Dail Éireann — 2026-05-21 ============================================================ Joanna Byrne (SF), Louth I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Feighan, for being here this evening, for his contribution and for his acknowledgement of the work of the committee over an extensive period in recent months. I also thank the Minister, Deputy O'Donovan, for acknowledging that work. Given the controversies around RTÉ and the fact that it is back in the headlines this week, I very much welcome the decision that it will finally come under the remit of the Comptroller and Auditor General. It is just a shame that the Government voted down Sinn Féin's Broadcasting (Oversight of RTÉ Accounts) (Amendment) Bill only last year. We could have moved on this prior to this latest controversy in the headlines. Regarding the response to the committee's report, given that the committee members are not here this afternoon, I am not going to speak for them. However, it should be noted that the Minister has acted on only 68 of the 85 recommendations of the committee. That leaves 20% of them not included in the Bill, which I believe we will debate on Second Stage next Thursday. Some of them are relevant to different sectors, including employment, tax, social insurance and copyright law, as outlined by the Minister of State. I understand that, but my understanding is that it has been decided not to accept ten of the recommendations. I am sure committee members will want to make their own contributions on this on Second Stage. I will not hold everybody up too late. Suffice it to say it is disappointing that geo-blocking was not mentioned in either the opening contribution or closing comments of the Minister of State. I understand they are not coming directly from the Minister of State himself but I sincerely hope that is not a reflection of the Government's intent with regard to this Bill. If it is, Deputy Ó Snodaigh and I have introduced the Broadcasting (All Ireland Service) (Amendment) Bill at First Stage and will have to pursue that if this is not included in the Bill next week. I put that on the record. I thank the Minister of State for his time. I know it is a busy week and there are other things going on. I appreciate his contribution. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-21/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:58+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-21