Ms Ashley Chadamoyo Makombe:

As has been said already one of the other barriers is the unpaid internship thing. Someone would have to be in a very privileged position to be able to take an unpaid internship. That is coupled with the fact that we know the media industry in and of itself is very elitist. There is a reason why, when I turn on television, that almost every single person in newsrooms looks a certain way. People tend to hire who they know. It is something that does not get talked about very much but when my mom first moved to this country, one of the things she taught me growing up, was that my social capital would be the thing that saves me. Ireland is beautiful in the sense that we are a village and country at the same time so everybody knows everybody but that is only of benefit is a person is not new to the community. If a person is moving here and does not have that same social capital or routes that have been settled, good luck trying to get a media job anyway. They are not going to hire you because they do not know you. If people's foot in the door is an unpaid internship and they cannot afford to do an unpaid internship or if they are in university full time so cannot do the internship at the same time, then it gets very hard to diversify a media sphere when everything is stacked against them. I do not know how much can be done about the nepotism thing apart from discouraging people from just hiring their nephew or neighbour's soon or whatever but advocating for unpaid internships to be abolished would be of benefit because there is so much talent in this country that is not tapped into. There are so many people who are amazing writers, hosts, producers or sound editors who get an opportunity to work at a big station or media company but it is unpaid and they have to pay rent, or their phone bill, or eat for a week and sometimes working in a newsroom is not worth living in poverty for so they choose the thing that will let them live as opposed to the thing that brings them joy which is a shame.