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27|04|05

Note of the Fourth meeting of the Ofcom Advisory Committee for Northern Ireland, 16 & 17 December 2004

Held at the Beech Hill House Hotel, Londonderry/Derry

Present:

Sinead Boyle
Carol Burrows
Brian Collins
Mags Connolly
Wallace Ewart
Michael McKernan
Jane Morrice
Una Murphy
Leslie Orr
Gerard Parr
Glyn Roberts
Denis Wolinski (Chairman)

In attendance:

Philip Thompson, External Relations Executive, Ofcom
Lila Truesdale, Customer Support Officer Ofcom NI (Minutes)
Geoff Delamere, Head of Strategy Planning, Ofcom

Apologies

David Elliott, Member Advisory Committee for Northern Ireland
Kevin McLaughlin, Consumer Panel Member for Northern Ireland
Rosemary Kelly, Content Board Member for Northern Ireland
Joanne McMullan, Head of Broadcasting and Telecommunications, Ofcom NI
Tony Stoller, External Relations Director, Ofcom

Thursday 16 December – 5.00 p.m.

1. Welcome and Round-table introductions

1.1 Denis Wolinski welcomed all present to the fourth meeting of the Advisory Committee for Northern Ireland.

2. Minutes of the last meeting, approvals and absences

2.1 Minutes of the last meeting were agreed and signed.

3 Matters Arising

3.1 Some Members of the Committee felt that an Induction course might be helpful to enable them to fully understand the wide remit of Ofcom. Other members felt that it was a gradual learning curve and that it would not be possible to digest the wide remit all at once. There was a suggestion that meeting with other Members of the Advisory Committees in Scotland and Wales could prove useful. The Committee were informed that Tony Stoller, External Relations Director, Ofcom had indicated that he was working on an Induction Course for Advisory Committee Members.

3.2 Minutes

It was agreed that future minutes would reflect the opinions of the Committee as a whole. Individual names would only be recorded when a member of the committee made a specific comment and requested that it be recorded. It was also agreed that Action Points would be noted.

3.3 Item 11.7 of the last Minutes 27 September 2004 was dealt with under Points Raised in Director’s Report.

4 Director’s Report (tabled)

The Director outlined various developments in the organisation and there were actions on the following:-

4.1 Belfast FM Licence

There were 11 applications for the Belfast FM licence. It was hoped that these would appear on the Ofcom website by Monday 20 December. The Committee were asked to look at the licences and feed back any comments they may have to the Director.

Action: Committee members to provide feedback on FM Belfast applications as soon as possible and no later than the third week in January.

Points raised during Director’s Report

4.2 Number of Meetings

There was a feeling that with the current amount of work coming to the Committee from Ofcom and the desire of the Committee to input into it was likely that a fifth meeting might be required next year but that the aim should be to move towards a more normal Quarterly programme of events the following year.

4.3 Independent Chair

The principle of an independent chair was agreed but the feeling was that this should not be rushed, should be discussed further at the next meeting and that a new Chair ought to come from within the present Committee and not be advertised outside of the Committee. It was felt that there was enough expertise within the Committee and that an outside appointee would lack the experience already gained by the Committee’s Members.

The point was made that attendance at several extra meetings or events was being asked for and Members felt guilty if they did not attend. It was agreed that members would indicate the particular areas – broadcasting, telecoms, spectrum, media literacy – in which they had an interest and would make a special effort to attend meetings and events outside of the Committee meetings in which they had indicated a particular interest.

Brian Collins proposed, and it was agreed, that two Members each would co-ordinate consultation responses on behalf of the Committee, to avoid duplication. This would mean a collated and coherent response to consultations on behalf of the Committee:

The two Members each for the following areas were:

PSB Review	Una Murphy and Michael McKernan
SRT Review	Brian Collins and Wallace Ewart
Spectrum Framework Review	Sinead Boyle and Gerard Parr
Radio Review	Jane Morrice and Carol Burrows
Media Literacy Mags	Connolly and Leslie Orr

There were two further actions resulting from the Director’s report.

Action: Director to email summary of issues raised at the Strategic Telecoms Review Launch in Belfast and responses to the SRTconsultation to the Committee

Action: Director to forward copies of JWG Report to the Committee

5 Report back from Strategy Away Day (Tabled)

Wallace Ewart and Brian Collins gave an overview of the Strategy Away Day held on 07 October 2004.

They highlighted the following concerns:

That citizens were not very aware of Ofcom
That some of Ofcom’s publications were written more for industry than with consumers in mind .Ofcom should be providing information which is easy to understand
Ofcom needs to find out the worries and issues of citizen consumers
Ofcom has not looked towards Europe enough. The Director assured Members that Ofcom does engage with Europe through the European Broadcasting Union and the European Regulators Group (ERG) - International Regulators Group (IRG),

The Committee was concerned that on occasions they received a copy of a document from Ofcom in Belfast and from Ofcom in London. The Director would raise this.
It was also highlighted that the existence of the Northern Ireland Advisory Committee is not well known and that it would be useful to let the press know when meetings are scheduled. The Director pointed out that this was being done; that he was about to be interviewed by Radio Foyle because they were in Derry and that Londonderry Sentinel would be coming to take photographs of the Committee to highlight its visit to the city.

Action: Press to be informed when and where future meetings of the Committee are taking place

6 Media Literacy Day Report – Mags Connolly

Mags Connolly gave an overview of the above report.

6.1 Media Literacy Panel

Mags Connolly reported that the purpose of the Panel was to provide ongoing qualitative research on emerging issues and that it was important that the research was properly targeted. It was hoped that the Panel would be established between July/September 2005.

The Director thanked Mags Connolly for her input to the meeting and informed the Committee that there would be opportunities for panel members to input to Ofcom’s work.

He asked if there were be any volunteers to attend the Rural and Remote Conference in Scotland on the 25th February. Carol Burrows and Jane Morrice agreed to attend.

Action: Committee members to let the Director know if anyone else wishes to attend

The Director also asked if any of the Committee would be interested in being involved in a Media Literacy Digital Inclusion Group – more than one person could attend.

Action: Committee members to let the Director know if they wish to be involved

7 Ofcom’s Annual Plan for 2005-06 – Geoff Delamere

Geoff Delamere gave a presentation on Ofcom’s Annual Plan for
2005-06.

8 NIAC Priorities for 2005

An email from Leslie Orr was tabled.

8.1 There were lengthy debates over several issues – in particular over what the Committee ought to be doing and what Ofcom ought to be doing in Northern Ireland.

There were particular demands for attention to be paid to the following over the next year:

8.2 Ofcom’s role in relation to consumers in Northern Ireland; more information about the services which Ofcom regulates, especially in the telecoms arena.

8.3 North/South input on a range of areas which affect citizen-consumers In Northern Ireland, particularly in relation to telecoms (and especially the mobile roaming issue) but also broadcasting.

Action: The Director agreed to produce an A4 sheet of information on the Mobile Roaming issue

8.4 Some members were concerned that Northern Ireland should not be simply left to last in relation to Digital Switchover and that serious thought and discussion with the relevant bodies in the Republic should happen. Northern Ireland will soon have 100% Broadband access and it is important that its progress into the digital era is well managed.

8.5 The point was also made that Northern Ireland had particular challenges in relation to encouraging and expanding media literacy and these needed to be addressed in an appropriate way.

It was agreed that the Office in Northern Ireland would:

8.6 Organise a conference along the model of the NIACT Annual Conference (possibly with sponsorship) on telecoms issues to which the full range of consumer, community and voluntary groups would be invited.

8.7 Endeavour to publish a report of the Ofcom-ComReg Joint Working Group at an early date.

8.8 Either be involved in a proposed conference on Broadband by Invest Northern Ireland or if necessary organise its own event to look at how best use could be made of the 100% Broadband roll-out to drive take-up, currently quite low.

8.9 Organise a Media Literacy Seminar/Conference to which all the relevant groups and organizations in Northern Ireland with an interest in the matter should be invited.

Friday 17 December 2004 – 9. 30 a.m.

9 PSB Review Update – Geoff Delamere

There was a lengthy debate about PSB Phase 2 at the end of which the following positions were agreed.

9.1 There was a welcome for the proposal that areas like Northern Ireland with its particular cultural and social characteristics, as well as its political dimension, needed to be properly and adequately reflected on the networks – BBC, ITV and Channel 4.

9.2 There was a continuing need for high quality regional programming on both BBC NI and UTV, which reflected the full diversity of Northern Ireland society. This should be maintained for as long as possible and should be provided in a complementary rather than a competitive way.

9.3. In the continuing absence of a statutory basis for indigenous language broadcasting in Northern Ireland the commitments and arrangements in the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement relating to Irish language and Ulster Scots should be fully honoured and developed. Furthermore, provision for TG4 to be made available on all digital platforms in Northern Ireland (and not just the current analogue proposal on Divis) needed to be progressed.

9.4. The suggestion made at the Content Board meeting in Belfast that RTÉ might provide PSB competition for BBC NI was not regarded as feasible.

9.5. However, RTÉ, and indeed TV3, should also be included in the thinking about digital provision in Northern Ireland.

9.6. Developments in rolling out community/local television were welcomed by the Committee but were not seen as currently being capable of providing a viable alternative to the PSB provided by the present arrangements.

10 Broadcasting Update – PSP

Jonathan Hanna gave an interesting overview of the above.

11 Radio Review

Jonathan Hanna gave an update on the above.

12 Consumer Panel Report on Digital Switchover

Paper was sent out to Committee prior to meeting.

13 Strategic Review of Telecoms Phase 2

Geoff Delamere gave a presentation on the above.

14 Summary of Complaints Received for Q2 04

Jonathan Hanna gave an overview of the above.

15 Meetings in 2005

The following dates were agreed:

Wednesday 23 February 2005
Monday 23 May 2005 (Board in Belfast)
Thursday 15 September 2005
Thursday 14 December 2005

Action: List of dates to be circulated

16 Any other Business

There was no other business.