Call for Dáil channel - TV Tripe? Why make it worse?

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s suggestion yesterday that RTE should transmit a dedicated Dáil channel on television is a mind-blowing suggestion.

He thinks that the Dáil would be more interesting than “a lot of the tripe that is on TV.”.

Daylong coverage of the Dáil and Seanad could serve a purpose for programme makers. They could call it Posturing Politicians, or Political Puff, and it would probably make even Desperate Housewives and — what the Taoiseach calls tripe — look positively good.

As we already have some coverage of Oireachtas proceedings on the nightly news and Oireachtas Report, people should question the suggestion of using the licence fee to further fund a dedicated channel for politicians.

If the Government is collecting too much from licence fees, it should lower the fee, not squander the money! Yet this Government has raised the licence fee, and the Taoiseach has the audacity to suggest that more money should be spent on something that very few, if anybody, wants.

If he really thinks that there is a desire for such a channel, could he explain why so few politicians bother to enter the chamber to listen or to partake in the debates. If he and his colleagues are not interested, why should he think that anybody else would be interested?

His suggestion is insulting, because it only makes political sense if it is designed as some kind of smokescreen to divert attention from the current epidemic of Government blunders.