Liz McManus (Wicklow, Labour)

Amendment No. 148 seeks a specific amount allocated to facilitate the growth of community radio. I do not want to labour the point because we debated this earlier in the context of community television. In dealing with public service broadcasting, the Minister quite often states that we need Irish stories told to Irish people. I do not disagree with that point. If one considers the kind of contact and expression that occurs at local level through local radio stations, there is no more important place for those stories to be told. This is one aspect of local radio. Community radio and television have a particular dimension that needs to be supported and acknowledged formally in some way other than the token references contained in the Bill. Its main dimension is that it is participatory; it involves local communities.

When I visited the Digital Hub recently in the Liberties, I was impressed with the work of a local community radio station based there. Many of its operators were quite elderly. While technological advance is very welcome, the danger of its march is that marginalised communities will get left behind. We must recognise this in some real way rather than just offering tokens.

The great strength of community radio and television programming is that it involves the very people of that community. Whether it is radio or television, I believe it has a good future and beneficial role to play, particularly as there is an increasing sense of being alienated in society with the loss of community being a constant refrain. It is a strength and a resource, not something to be given lip-service. We should be encouraging it.

I am not trying to be prescriptive in the amount given to such programming. Instead I am requesting the laying down of the principle in the Bill that community radio and television offers the unique dimension of a participatory nature that other forms of broadcasting do not.

See this speech in context