Mr. Brian Greene:

I thank the Cathaoirleach and members for the opportunity to speak to them today. Craol is the network of community radio stations in Ireland.

We have 21 full-licence stations and 14 aspirant pilot-licence stations. The main objective of community radio is to provide social benefits for the communities we serve through community development using media as a tool to achieve this. We are in 11 of 26 counties with 40% national population reach. The staff and voluntary boards of management facilitate more than 2,100 volunteers broadcasting more than 175,000 hours of unique local community radio content each year. We provide QQI levels 3 and 4 training in media production and free radio training as an introduction to the more than 15,000 volunteers who have come through our doors over the past 35 years. We are strong in the area of media plurality - we are 100% community owned and all of our programmes come from within our community.

In February 2025, CRAOL published a major survey conducted by Amárach Research to measure the impact of community radio in Ireland. Findings include that four in ten adults, 40%, reported listening to at least one community radio station in the previous week. Compared with the general adult population, community radio listeners, particularly frequent listeners, are more likely to be male aged 18 to 34, a very hard demographic to reach and which we are reaching. Nearly half of listeners, 46%, have participated in an activity with their community radio station, with engagement rising to 64% among frequent listeners. Frequent listeners and those aged over 55 from the C2DE socioeconomic group are another hard group to reach. Community radio audiences do not hear any public information notices funded by the Government to advance services and campaigns of national importance. CRAOL calls on the Oireachtas to help level the playing field and ensure Government advertising is also served to audiences that often most need to hear messages from Government agencies. I will hand over to my colleague, Ms O'Neill, compliance and development co-ordinator with CRAOL.