Ms Susan McKay:

Diversity is a huge issue for all public institutions in Ireland. It is something we have come to relatively late as a society and in some ways, as a northerner, I see more change in the North because of the cataclysmic events that occurred there which led to a lot of changes being made around the time of the Good Friday Agreement and even before that.

There is a lack of diversity in the press, and most editors will acknowledge that. I have a couple of initiatives coming up which I hope will signal my intent, as Press Ombudsman, to try to encourage more diversity. I am not making that up. Those initiatives will be announced in the next few weeks. The problem with the decline of revenue for the print media is that there is a lack of funding to pay journalists. If one considers what it costs to pay a journalist to carry out investigations or do work on which t is necessary to spend a great deal of time, it is a hard line of work for people to go into. The pay is not what it should be.

As with all the other professions in Ireland, one sees a predominance of middle-class people whose parents can afford to help to support them while they are finding their feet. There is no doubt that it is exclusive. Generally, assisting the media to become better resourced will help that. There are journalists who are older than me who have the possibility to retire from well-paid jobs with good pensions, but I think they are the potentially the last generation of people about whom that could be said. There are many people in journalism who are on short-term contracts and who are not in salaried positions. They o not have the proper range of entitlements that people should be able to have in order to be secure in their profession. That inevitably leads to people making choices not to go into the profession.

As far as the Press Council is concerned, it appointed me, knowing me to be a feminist, a human rights advocate and someone who has worked in organisations that have campaigned for the rights of minorities and women and against sectarianism and racism. I am the first woman to be the Press Ombudsman in Ireland, probably the first Protestant and definitely the first northerner. By appointing somebody like me, it has shown an intent to bring a sense of fresh air to the institution. I am not saying that there was not any fresh air in the first place, but there is definitely room for change. There is good gender balance in the Press Council, but it could do with further diversification. The current chairperson and I have had conversations about moving things in that direction. The intent is there, but it is all about encouraging people to apply and to feel that they will be taken seriously as candidates. People join the Press Council by responding to public advertisements.