New Legislation for Communications and Media

Currently two new Bills are presented in the Seanad:
1. The Communications Regulation Bill provides for the establishment of a body to be known as the Commission for Communications Regulation which will:

• Replace the Office of the Director of Telecommunications Regulation (ODTR) with a three person Commission,
• Deal with disruption of traffic-flow caused by cable laying,
• To increase the powers of enforcement of the new Commission, and to increase the penalties for breaches of licence conditions by operators.

In the last issue of Tracking Margaretta D'Arcy wrote about the threat of the new penalties as "Cleansing the Airwaves", and drew attention to the closure of 36 unlicenced (pirate) stations last August. She called for support to lobby the Department of Enterprise and politicians to scrap the Section that allowed the seizure of equipment and the imposition of fines up to £20,000 or two years in prison. She also called for the establishment of an Impact Enquiry by the ODTR to find out the facts of what pirate radio stations actually do. CMN supported this and accordingly wrote to the Department and to the ODTR. Aosdana has also passed a motion in support of this concern.

The bill has now passed through the Seanad, and will go to Committee stage.

The Bill should be accessible on the Department of Public Enterprise site - www.dpe.ie under What's New, however I had to go to the Oireachtas site - www.oireachtas.ie far more friendly - and found it there under legislation number 11 of 2002, and it is downloadable as a pdf file

2.The Digital Hub: provides for the establishment of a body to be known as the Digital Hub Development Agency "and connected matters". It has been presented to the Seanad. Go to the Oireachtas site again for this one. You'll find it in 2002 same as above.

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