Mr. John Purcell:

I thank the committee for the invitation to appear today. Every week our members in the IBI broadcast hundreds of hours of live radio, an environment which is fraught with risk. However, the independent radio sector has operated under a non courts-based resolution mechanism for many years, and across the sector the number of complaints proceeding to legal remedy is quite low. The system is overseen by the broadcasting regulator, currently Coimisiún na Meán, and until last year by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland. This system does not prejudice legal action being taken, but in some cases it can provide a boost to legal actions being taken against broadcasting organisations that otherwise may not be sustainable.

We have submitted a document to the committee, which outlines how the process worked and we have also identified a number of issues and how we feel the system could be improved. As a principle we believe it is always preferable to seek to address complaints outside the realm of the law courts and the system we have has largely worked well. One of the positive points about a non courts-based complaints resolution mechanism is that the barriers to making a complaint are quite low. There is no charge and the mechanism places responsibilities on broadcasters to respond to and address complaints in a very rapid manner - less than one month. This is a two-edged sword. While not especially old, the processes and procedures regarding complaints were framed and developed in something of a different age. They are grounded on assumptions of complainants always acting in good faith and without much consideration being given to the mobilisation of mass campaigns of complaining. We unfortunately now live in an age of outrage and radicalisation. In other jurisdictions there is a trend towards the weaponisation of complaints processes. We are beginning to see that here.

We are thankfully not in an unmanageable situation yet. However, we have no reason to believe this trend may not emerge in this country. We have seen isolated incidents. This could become problematic for broadcasters and the regulatory system. It should be borne in mind when consideration is being given to changes to current structures and the development of further structures. To date, complaints regarding broadcasters submitted to the regulator regardless of the scale, complexity or detail are addressed in more or less the same manner. Once a complaint is submitted the broadcaster is required to submit a detailed explanation and defence of its position to the regulator. The complaint and response are then considered by the complaints mechanism within the regulator. Given the ramifications of a complaint being upheld, all complaints are taken seriously.

We believe that in future, the development of the complaints procedure operated by the regulator should provide a variety of options depending on the seriousness of the complaint. In the judicial system, not all cases start at the Supreme Court and the judicial system operates on the basis of varying levels of courts. Before a case is taken to court there is a procedure to establish whether there is a case to answer. We believe that in further developing non court-based resolution mechanisms for our media there needs to be further work done on determining if there is a case to answer in order to avoid the trend of huge amounts of time being taken up with large volumes of often not very serious complaints.