I support my colleague, Senator Norris, on his call for a debate on freedom of speech. Casting free speech and religious freedom as inferior to anti-discrimination laws should be debated in this House, as should the universal human right to the freedom to have a belief.

I want to raise the issue of a lack of consistency in planning decisions across local authorities. In County Donegal, a recent decision was taken to refuse a major planning application for a cinema complex in Donegal town. It goes against the economic remit of the planning and economic development section of the county council. It was a shortsighted decision which has been raised by many council members, including local councillors, Micheál Naughton and Tom Conaghan. My colleague in the other House, the Leas-Cheann Comhairle, Deputy Pat The Cope Gallagher, has lambasted this decision as well. Shortsighted decisions of this nature rob rural towns of economic potential and job creation.

When making planning determinations about projects of an economic nature, local authorities have to ensure they fulfil all the obligations contained within the local plan and also in national legislation. A freedom of information request was not even sought in this case. I ask for the Minister to come to the House to debate this issue and the obligations placed on the management of local authorities under the new Local Government Reform Act 2014. It is clearly not working and the councillors are left to raise certain issues. The management may or may not listen. The management in County Donegal is not listening to the vast majority of concerns being expressed by local councillors.

This is the third time I have addressed the roll-out of LEADER programme funding from the Department of Rural and Community Development. I believe the process is totally wrong. If a community group applies, it has to undergo what is called an article 48 check. There are 66 questions on just article 48. Every question has to be answered. It then goes back to the Carlow County Development Partnership, CCDP, and Pobal several times, then the local community development committee, LCDC, which is the main group handling this, then to the Department. It then returns to the LCDC. In over two years, only €150,000 has been spent through the Leader programme. Some €10.5 million is waiting to be approved.

This approval process takes forever because there are so many stages to go through. In Carlow, there has been one approval with about ten offers that are still with the Department. This is a national issue. This programme involves €250 million over seven years. We are over two years into this process, with very little funding going out. I am beginning to believe that the Minister has put this process in place so that people do not get their funding. The Minister, Deputy Ring, needs to come into this Chamber to address this issue and the process that these community groups have waited in for so long for their funding.

I endorse what Senator Norris has said about the need for this House to reconsider the balance with regard to freedom of speech. I was struck during the week by a piece by Philip Ryan in The Sunday Independent about words put up on the Internet about the late Deputy Peter Mathews with regard to his death-----

It is shocking.

-----by an activist in the pro-choice movement. I was struck particularly by her reply when confronted with the appalling bad manners and cruelty of the remarks she had published. She said she did not know the family of the late Peter Mathews and did not know whether they had read the remarks she made. He was a classmate of mine for ten years at school.

He was a thoroughly decent man.

To echo what Senator Norris is saying, although I would not agree with him on many matters with regard to the issue on which she disagreed with him, he was a person who everybody in these Houses will remember as a thoroughly decent and good-hearted person. This makes me consider this point. Why do people risk their membership of Fine Gael's national executive council by putting things on the Internet which they would not dare put in a letter to the editor of the Evening Herald, let alone The Irish Times, which they know would never be published? Why do people consider that, under either the anonymity or semi-anonymity of being obscurely identifiable, they can say things about other people which are totally uninhibited? They are remarks that one might make over a pint in a pub but would certainly never wish to see in permanent form to hurt the feelings of others.

By the same token, and to add to the point Senator Norris made, it is remarkable that these Houses have licensed a radio service and that a set of radio licencees have said that no columnist in The Irish Times can broadcast on or be invited to participate in discussion programmes on its radio stations. Denis O'Brien appears to be the owner of these stations and the originator of the ban. We have to ask about that and freedom of speech.

Hear, hear.

It is all very well to talk about front-line defenders and to pose as the champion of journalistic free speech when one does things like that. We should have a debate in the House on freedom of speech. I do not believe in the current view that somehow social media are an opportunity to be utterly disinhibited and to say anything one likes about anybody regardless of the consequences. We must allow diversity and even mildly offensive material to be in our media and we should not automatically use some kind of catechism of political correctness to determine who can and cannot be broadcasters or guests on radio stations, which we license, and which are required to be objective and fair in discussions.