Ms Emma Bowell:

Our organisations span both the media sector and the community and voluntary sector. As everyone knows for an organisation to be professionally run, it needs paid staff who can then be supported by volunteers. Although we are obviously running on a much smaller scale than the likes of RTÉ, TG4 or Virgin Media, we still have many of the same tasks to do, such as programming and scheduling content, broadcast engineering, financial management, compliance with the BAI codes and standards to name just a few. Through the incredible dedication of a core group of people who have stuck with this for the past 15 years, we have broadcast thousands of hours of community programming and provided enormous social benefit for these communities. However, to develop sustainably we need a guaranteed source of annual income. We believe the most obvious source for this would be 1% of the annual TV licence fee, or whatever the new model may be. Social benefit is something we are very committed to. We welcome the new social benefit round in Sound and Vision but we would like there to be an annual commitment to this. Another source of support could potentially come from the new content levy and we wish to be included in any schemes being developed as part of this.

In order for community television to develop sustainably, we need to increase its visibility. Not everybody knows that we exist. Currently the two stations are only available on a subscription service with Virgin Media. While we thank Virgin Media for the facilitation of this over the years, we are, at Channels 802 and 803, difficult to find in the listings. We would like to be moved higher up the listings. Fundamentally, we believe community television should be available on a free-to-air basis to everyone in the country and in future we would like to see a community TV channel on Saorview. This could perhaps be a best of community TV from around the country. We also have a keen interest from NVTV, a community TV station in Belfast, which could then develop into an all-island channel. To finish, we have a proven track record in providing social benefit and helping to build community through media. With further support we know that we can achieve so much more.