Online Safety and Media Regulation Bill 2022: Report and Final Stages
Dail Éireann — 2022-11-30
============================================================

Denis Naughten (IND), Roscommon-Galway

I thank the Minister for her response and for her movement on this since Committee Stage. The difficulty is that we cannot draft an amendment that creates a charge on the Exchequer; we have to go through this rigmarole of putting down these nonsensical amendments. In fairness, the Minister is acknowledging the issue and putting a mechanism in place. I ask the Minister for an assurance that we will get sight of this report when it is completed and when she has considered it. No matter what the decision is, I ask the Minister to give us sight of it. She has moved part of the way to acknowledge the financial challenge that is there. This is a big issue for many radio stations, not only for the Minister's radio station of Shannonside Northern Sound or my local radio station but it is one for my other local radio stations: Galway Bay FM; Midwest Radio; Midlands 103; Ocean FM; and iRadio. Because of my geographic location in the middle of the country, I have five of these local radio stations that are under serious financial pressure and that are providing a vital local service. I would hope that in the process of the Minister's consideration and analysis of this and in her engagement with the new commission, we can come to a situation where those small, local and independent radio stations get a real financial break next year and the year after. I thank the Minister for her comments this evening.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2022-11-30/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:51:21+00:00
Sitting date: 2022-11-30