OPINION/Vincent Browne On Monday The Irish Times devoted 3½ pages to the coverage of rugby. None of the games it covered was of any consequence.
Last week The Irish Times devoted about 1½ pages over three days to the coverage of the Dáil, less than half the space it gave over an entire week in one day to rugby. It gave more space to the coverage of the Munster Club Senior Hurling Championship semi-finals on Monday than it did to the Dáil in any one day last week.
The public service broadcaster RTÉ gives no time at all until after midnight to coverage of the Dáil, apart from brief snippets in news bulletins. The public service broadcaster gives acres of space to coverage of rugby, soccer, GAA, horse racing, even greyhound racing, Eastenders, Fair City, Coronation Street (or is that gone to the other public service broadcaster?), pop music competitions and game shows.
The response to this observation may well be that this is what readers, viewers, listeners are interested in. I'm not so sure about that, but let's accept it for the time being. But if that is the contention, let's hear no more of the newspaper of record/public service broadcaster pretence.
It might also be contended that the Dáil is not worth covering and the emptiness of the chamber for most of the time shows that the TDs themselves think it is an irrelevance. That may indeed be what many TDs think but, if so, they are wrong.
Last week the Dáil debated economic policy and the performance of the Minister responsible, Charlie McCreevy. While much of the debate was the usual blather, it was about serious issues: whether the electorate had been misled in the run-up to the last election and what economic policy should be.
Richard Bruton made a good speech in the course of which he referred to the infamous letter Charlie McCreevy sent to the then leader of Fine Gael, Michael Noonan, on May 13th , just before the election.
In that letter Mr McCreevy said there were no significant overruns in public expenditure, and no cutbacks whatsoever were being planned, secretly or otherwise. We now know that this was simply untrue. There were huge overruns in the previous few months and, within a week or so of the election, memoranda were being produced in the Department of Finance calling for spending to be reined in. Within weeks of the Budget the Minister had on the table €300 million in spending cuts.
The well-researched speech by Richard Bruton went to 2,092 words. On the basis of its coverage as shown on its website, The Irish Times published 79 words on the speech. RTE gave it similar coverage. Charlie McCreevy replied the following day, and the coverage his speech got was also derisory.
Impressive speeches by Bernard Allen and Olivia Mitchell of Fine Gael got no mention at all. Similarly, substantial speeches by Bertie Ahern and Mary Harney got almost no coverage. Ditto with Pat Rabbitte's speech and those of the Green Party and Sinn Féin representatives.
Contrary to popular perceptions of speeches in the Dáil, they are not all full of hot air. Often they are substantial, considered contributions, but they may as well be hot air for they are spoken into thin air, nobody noticing.
Several other important issues were debated in the Dáil last week - a motion on child poverty tabled by Dan Neville, others on alcohol abuse and flood relief. There were questions on the exemption from tax of the bloodstock industry, on the national pensions reserve fund, on decentralisation, third-level fees, adult education, emigration, Northern Ireland. Bills on criminal justice, rail safety and sea pollution were also dealt with.
All serious issues, and on many of them there was serious debate - and hardly any coverage, anywhere. Meanwhile, day after day, all our newspapers are full of sports coverage, and RTÉ is full of it, too.
Before we go any further let me acknowledge that I often read the sports pages first, and when I edited the Sunday Tribune there were pages of sport, too. And more pages on "lifestyle" - potted plants, herbal remedies, tarot-card readings, cheap weekend breaks on the Isle of Man and incontinence pads.
But what is it about us that sports coverage is so much more important than coverage of our parliament and that even this lifestyle stuff gets more attention? Not just a bit more important and a bit more attention, but mega more important and mega more attention?
How is it that in neither the print or broadcast media is any attempt made to report on what happens in parliament in a way that would be interesting for our readers, listeners and viewers?
After a while you begin to wonder why the likes of Richard Bruton, Dan Neville, Eamon Gilmore, John Gormley and many others bother at all?
It is not the fault of the reporters on the Dáil press gallery, although to be frank they are very often not there. They have no need to bother much because their newspapers and broadcast organisations are not interested, except in the occasional histrionics. For that's the way it is.