Mr. Ciaran Moore:

When we put forward our proposal, we discussed mechanisms for making it work. We use as a model the current broadcasting fund, which is 7% of the public service broadcasting charge and allocated by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland. Our view was that perhaps 50% of the fund might be split on a pro ratabasis between the 31 local authorities, with the remaining funding allocated according to the amount collected. If the fund was, say, €15 million, there would be an allocation of between €600,000 and €1 million per local authority. While there would be some disparity in terms of the numbers, one of the important aspects of the fund was that there would be resources available for people to engage in tactical interventions and fit media skills, including media production skills, into other activities. It has to be of a certain scale. There is no point in a small rural county getting tens of thousands of euro because that is not enough to have an impact.
To follow on from what Dr. Brennan said, often the types of training and experiential learning people receive when they engage with community media spark an interest in these skills which transfers over into third level and other training courses. One of the activities of which I was most proud during all my time with DCTV was our work with a number of small youth centres which were running local training initiatives. These initiatives involved engaging with young unemployed people, many of whom did not have a leaving certificate or other formal accreditation. We provided a single media module which was promoted on the basis of helping people to make their own neighbourhood television programme. The media training was effectively a carrot - after all, everybody wants to be on television - which helped the organisers to recruit people into a formal education setting. We are not in any way seeking to replace the existing structures. Rather, our objective would be to partner with those training providers to deliver innovative small projects such as the one to which I referred. In many cases, the people we are training in media skills will not end up in media careers. In our view, it is about equipping people with basic literacy skills.