With a decade of broadcast experience, volunteers with Scariff Bay Community Radio were on tenderhooks in recent months, pending the outcome of their application for a full licence to allow the station to dramatically increase its level of broadcasting. Now approved, it brings to 22 the number of community radio stations in the State with a full-time licence.

The station signed off on the licencing agreement in December with Ireland’s media regulator Coimisiún na Meán (CnM).

“It will allow us to broadcast seven days a week if we want to,” said jubilant station manager Jim Collins, who has been involved from the start in 2015.

Even the application itself was nationally significant because no station has sought a full-time license since 2017 when Community Radio Kilkenny City received one and began broadcasting seven days a week.

“The licensing of Scariff Bay Community Radio is a very positive move for community media in Ireland,” said Brian Greene, chair of Craol, the national umbrella organisation for community radio stations.

He said that many aspirant stations have been waiting more that a decade to transition from pilot licence to full licence stations.

“We welcome the new impetus of Coimisiún na Meán with regard to licensing new services in community radio,” he said.

Community radio stations rely on volunteers and the core aim of every one of them is community development – using radio to bring people together.

Volunteering is good for you, says Jim: “It keeps the brain ticking over. It brings you out, there’s a social benefit in meeting people and in working with other people with the same interest. One of our volunteers jokes that it keeps him off the tablets!”

Clearly people in East Clare like getting together and have a lot to say.

“In 2017 we got our first FM licence,” recalled Jim. “The normal first FM licence is a 30-day licence, so we broadcast every Saturday for about six months. In 2019 we got our first hundred-day licence and with that we broadcast for 50 weekends, both Saturday and Sunday. We have basically been doing that since 2019.”

Now that the station has been awarded a full licence, it is for the group to choose how often to broadcast.

“For us, it’s a hobby, it’s an interest and we don’t want to be stressed from it. We are a voluntary group and we haven’t the personnel or the resources, or the population, to go seven days a week,” said Jim. But they will go halfway; starting anew broadcasting three days a week (Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays) is realistic.

“We are getting more and more people in doing programmes and broadcasting. We have a board of nine people and at last count we had about 90 volunteers,” he said.

Some of Scariff’s volunteers are already involved on a weekly basis, for example covering sports. They also have people who like to help out behind the scenes.
Many of the station’s volunteers are heavily involved in other local organisations and bring a valuable perspective to Scariff Bay.

“Lots of our them would be in other organisations like Comhaltas, or like Conradh na Gaeilge or the GAA or rugby or athletics, or the Irish Countrywomen’s Association.
“They are well placed to tell us what is going on and we’re an outlet for those organisations to spread their message,” said Jim.

Now they have much more airtime to offer their volunteers.

Tune in here: http://www.scariffbayradio.com/