Broadcasting legislation should be amended to compel television stations to subtitle up to 90 per cent of their programmes for deaf people, Fine Gael said yesterday.
The party's communications spokesman, Mr Simon Coveney TD, said he would introduce a Dáil private member's motion in the autumn to increase the subtitling or captioning of programmes on a phased basis from the end of next year.
Mr Coveney said: "Many people don't realise, but 17 per cent of Irish people have some form of hearing loss or are deaf."
At a press conference attended by representatives of the deaf community, Mr Coveney said 50,000 people currently used programmes with captions. However, he believed that up to 150,000 could benefit from increased use of the system.
It was no longer sufficient to rely on guidelines and negotiation, he said.
The Broadcasting Commission of Ireland should be obliged in legislation to enforce a requirement to increase the captioning of programmes.
Mr Coveney said: "In the UK there is a commitment by the BBC to 100 per cent captioning by 2008, while in Canada they have already achieved that target. In the US the target is to have 95 per cent of programmes subtitled by 2006."
The provision of the service by Irish broadcasters was mixed, and "TV3 in particular have a long way to go to meet the standards we are laying out here".
"RTÉ caption 68 per cent of peak-time programming, TG4 caption 50 per cent of peak-time programmes while TV3 currently only caption Coronation Street," he said.
Fine Gael said 60 per cent of all television programmes and all main news bulletins should be captioned by the end of 2004. This should increase by 10 per cent annually to 90 per cent at the end of 2007.
The chairman of the National Association for Deaf People, Mr Niall Keane, said a statutory framework was required to increase the practice of subtitling programmes.