'Hijacked' airwaves harming music

THE AIRWAVES have been hijacked by forces outside the country to the detriment of Irish music, a Dáil committee was told yesterday.

Musician Danny McCarthy told the Joint Committee on Arts, Sport and Tourism that no matter how much money was invested in Irish music, without airplay it was “money down the drain”.

He called on the Government to establish a media regulatory body to ensure Irish music received fair airplay. Mr McCarthy was among a delegation from the music industry that appeared before the committee yesterday to discuss supporting the industry. The delegation also included musician Mick Broderick and representatives from the Irish Association of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, the Irish Music Rights Organisation (Imro), Claddagh Records, Tara Records and the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland.

Mr McCarthy said policy statements and broadcasting Acts were littered with aspirations, but fell short of allocating concrete responsibility or accountability. This led to a “free for all” and a “slicing up of the airways”, which were hijacked by outside forces.

The broadcasting authority and the Department of Communications had a blind, laissez-faire attitude he said, and failed to accept responsibility or accountability.

A media regulatory body would enable Irish artists to get time on the airways, “the most important resource of which they are being deprived”, Mr McCarthy said.

Michael O’Keeffe, chief executive of the broadcasting authority, told the committee it was impossible to impose quotas on radio stations to play a percentage of Irish music because the European Commission had prohibited the introduction of quotas by nationality.

“It is difficult to know how we can change that without falling foul of the EU,” he said.

But he said stations had to say how much Irish music they would play when they applied for a broadcasting licence and this ranged from 15 to 30 per cent.

Victor Finn, chief executive of Imro, highlighted the fall in CD sales in Ireland. He said it was incumbent on all internet service providers to work with the music industry so that illegal distribution of music was minimised.

Fine Gael TD Jimmy Deenihan said Irish music defines us as a country and suggested the committee produce a report on how to support the industry.

Fianna Fáil Senator Paschal Mooney said radio request shows had declined in Ireland. “They are afraid of what the public might actually ask for,” he said.