FIANNA Fail will oppose the Government's Broadcasting Bill when it goes to the Dail, according to the party's spokeswoman on Arts, Culture and Heritage, Ms Sile de Valera.
She said the main problem with the legislation was the proposal to include a broadcasting super authority, which would confuse the demarcation between public service broadcasting and the independent commercial sector.
The proposed legislation is currently being circulated to Ministers as a memorandum to Government by the Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, Mr Higgins.
The main proposal is a Broadcasting Commission, which would become the regulator for all broadcasting in the State, as well as setting standards, advising the Government on broadcasting policy and licensing new broadcasters.
The commission would be able to investigate RTE, and the RTE Authority would become the board of a national broadcasting corporation, losing its advisory functions to Government and wider powers outside running RTE.
The new commission, which will have a full time paid board, would become "just another quango for Minister Higgins's appointments", said Ms de Valera.
She welcomed the proposal to protect national sporting events from satellite television provider by ensuring that major events remain generally available to television viewers.
However, she said Mr Higgins had not gone far enough. "This designation of major sporting events as part of our cultural heritage should be done in a separate Bill so as to ensure clarity of purpose. To this end, Fianna Fail currently has in preparation a private" members' Bill to provide a legal framework to ensure the universality of access to major cultural events and to restrict the monopolisation of events by minority paid channels.
Ms de Valera said the Bill would be introduced in the Dail this term and would list the major events to be protected. "Given that our Bill is likely to be ready long before the Minister's, we will be asking the Government to support our legislation," she said.
The proposals, as reported in The Irish Times, were a rehash" of the Green Paper on Broadcasting, she said. It was very cynical of the Minister to wait until the past minute to produce a Bill based on a green paper published two years ago.
There was no comment from either RTE or the Independent Radio and Television Commission (IRTC). A spokesman for the IRTC said they would not comment until the proposals had been, released by the Minister officially.
The independent broadcasting sector will be deeply disappointed that the revenue from the licence fee will continue to go to RTE, though it will be handed over by the commission. Independent" radio has been lobbying hard for a share of the licence fee in order to compensate for its public service broadcasting requirements.
The Minister will not be publishing a White Paper. However, he plans to publish the Scheme of the Bill when it has been approved by Government, but before it has been finalised, in order to allow debate.