Ms Linda O'Reilly:

I am the editor of the Anglo-Celt news publisher in Cavan. I listened to the points about paywalls, micropayments and metering. What works for one media outlet might not necessarily work for another. However, when one is dealing with regional news publishers, such as the Anglo-Celt in Cavan, we have looked at paywalls and membership models. We have done quite a bit of research on them in the past. We are mindful that we are the only newspaper and news publisher now across multiple platforms in County Cavan. There is that importance of access to news and information for people that they can trust that is collated by trained and experienced journalists – information that they can rely on. We certainly would not want to put any unnecessary expense or burden on people to have to pay to access that. However, somebody has to pay for this journalism.

We have a news team of six on the ground in County Cavan, which is more than any other local media outlet. We do not dip in and out of courts or council meetings; we go to them and cover them all. We have a journalist who could be there for the day and needs a day to write that up. That is a massive commitment and a major human and financial resource into that public service journalism. It is very important and we take our role very seriously in the wider democracy and the wider ecosystem of news. If we are not there at that court case, in that council meeting or at that educational training board meeting to hear a school merger being proposed potentially behind closed doors, somebody is not there to report that back to the public in a fair and balanced manner.

It is very important that we are there and on the ground. We just need help. If some of the Future of Media Commission recommendations can be implemented around, say, training funds for public service journalism for subsidised internships and stuff like that, it would really help us to keep our journalistic resources intact as we make the transition. Our current digital strategy is to be digital first. We eventually will need to be digital only. However, we need to keep our journalistic resources intact to make that transition.

Our challenge has always been revenue, not reach or relevance. To answer the Deputy’s earlier point, we have more people accessing news and information via the Anglo-Celt now through our paper, our online edition and our social media channels. I looked at the web figures last night. The Anglo-Celtin Cavan alone has already gone over the 4 million page views so far this year and 1.3 million unique users to the end of October. It has already surpassed last year’s total by more than 10%, and that was a record year in itself. People are coming to us and they trust us. What we do is very important to the communities that we serve. We have done that since 1846 in Cavan. We need the Government’s support now. We are at a tipping point and we do not want to have to let journalists go. It is very important.