IT IS unlikely the general election will be called next week. Some of the most important politicians, i.e. the party whips, will be out of the country. An all-party delegation from the Oireachtas - led by the Government chief whip Jim Higgins, and including FF whip Dermot Ahern, Labour whip Brian Fitzgerald, PD whip Liz O'Donnell and Senators Maurice Manning and Donie Cassidy - are going to Washington for five days to discuss parliamentary broadcasting.
Television coverage of the Dail and Seanad was introduced, after much debate, in the autumn of 1990. Committees came under scrutiny three and four years later as rooms were electronically equipped. Now the time has come for a reappraisal. The blanket recording of daily happenings is undertaken by Windmill, who won the contract: Windmill feeds the tapes to RTE in Montrose, at an annual cost to the station of about £50,000. There they are edited for the bulletins and programmes going out to the public.
The Oireachtas Committee on Broadcasting, mostly whips, is the supreme authority and generally it has all worked very well and everyone is happy. The rules laid down by the committee include a ban on reaction shots - thus, if a minister is under attack we can't see his or her face, only that of the speaker; and once a disturbance breaks out the camera must shift to the Ceann Comhairle so scenes of disorder arc not shown and the rowdy can't gain publicity. What the deputies don't like, however, is the frequent showing of empty benches. It doesn't go down well in the constituencies (thus the practice of doughnutting" whereby colleagues surround the speaker to give the impression of a full house).
In Washington, the committee will meet politicians and representatives of C-Span, the channel dedicated to parliamentary affairs, to talk about best practices in other democracies. More live coverage of debates will be considered and video conferencing and satellites are also on the agenda. After the trip, TnaG may not be the only channel running daily live coverage from Leinster House during sitting days.
