RTE transmission network will be swapped for stake in digital company

RTE is to hand its transmission network to the company introducing digital broadcasting to Ireland, in return for a minority shareholding in the venture.

The State broadcaster will receive a maximum 40 per cent stake in the new entity, but the exact shareholding will be decided by how the majority partners value the station's assets.

The move, provided for in the long-awaited Broadcasting Bill which was published yesterday, will pave the way for the digital era, with at least 30 terrestrial digital channels in the short-term.

Introducing the Bill, the Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, Ms de Valera, said she hoped the project would be successfully concluded by the end of this year.

She added that the legislation would also provide a secure footing for high-quality broadcasting, relevant to Irish society, "well into the next millennium".

RTE is expected to have sole rights to one of the new company's six "multiplexes" - broadcasting devices each of which has the capacity for five or six television channels. TV3 and TnaG will share another, with the four remaining multiplexes free to carry UK terrestrial channels as subscription services, as well as premium sports and movie channels. Internet and other interactive facilities may also be carried.

The Bill provides for Teilifis na Gaeilge to become an independent entity, and it also reverses an earlier Government proposal to abolish the Broadcasting Complaints Commission. Instead the commission is to get a broader remit, to cover complaints dealing with all legal broadcasters.

A management group drawn from relevant Government departments and RTE is overseeing the project, in which the one or more successful bidders to become RTE's strategic partners will be required to bring expertise as well as finance to the operation.

The Minister stressed that the Bill was not solely concerned with the introduction and regulation of digital terrestrial television, but also restated the public service broadcasting remit under which RTE operated.

Saying she was "absolutely convinced of the need for one national service that caters for the needs of all citizens", she warned that unless public service broadcasting was maintained and supported, "we run the risk of creating a two-tier society".

Given the "multitude of non-Irish services" now available, she believed there was "an unanswerable case for a strong public service broadcaster that caters to the specific needs and the culture of Irish viewers and that contextualises issues of public concern for our citizens".

But she added that the Bill required RTE to report to her annually about how the television licence fee revenue was spent.

The Minister also promised an amendment to the Bill at committee stage, to relax the prohibition on religious advertising.

RTE welcomed the Bill as a "fundamentally important piece of legislation" designed to address "complex issues facing our society at a time when broadcasting and the electronic mass media are undergoing profound and rapid transformation".

In a statement, the station added: "Changes in technology and telecommunications are reshaping our social and economic life. It is vitally important for our democracy that we retain sovereignty over the policy and practice of mass communication in our own country."

Fine Gael's spokesman on the arts, Mr Enda Kenny, also welcomed the legislation but criticised it for not dealing with the issue of funding for RTE. He also expressed disappointment that in the context of the Belfast Agreement, there were no specific proposals on all-Ireland broadcasting.

The Audiovisual Federation of IBEC said the legislation was "long overdue", but regretted there was no provision for index-linking the TV licence fee.