Mr. Paul Gordon:

The National Youth Council of Ireland has long campaigned for the abolition of internships. As part of our submission to this committee, we spoke to a number of young journalists who pointed to it as a significant barrier to access, especially for people from disadvantaged backgrounds and from minorities. Our sister organisation, the European Youth Forum, did research on internships. People from lower-income backgrounds were four times less likely to be able to undertake one compared with those on middle incomes and eight times less likely than those on higher incomes. We see similar figures for people from minority backgrounds, be they Travellers, people of colour or LGBTQ+. It requires Government support for the sector to enable media companies to ensure there are apprenticeship programmes and pathways to work and graduate traineeships for people from particular minority backgrounds. That is important.

On Headline and a similar body being established, that would be helpful for the broader community here today in ensuring that there is adequate monitoring, evaluation and reporting on equality, diversity and inclusion. We saw in the Future of Media Commission report and in BAI reports that there is a dearth of data in that respect. The sector is flying blind if it does not have data that can inform good decision-making. That needs to be addressed and that kind of body would be important in doing that. On the mainstreaming of issues, Ms Chadamoyo Makombe and I were talking about that as we came in. Perhaps she wishes to comment.