Public Media Ireland: a New PSM Organisation for a New Country

This report considers what might happen to RTÉ and the BBC, the two major Public Service Media (PSM) organisations on the island of Ireland, in the event of Irish reunification. While reunification may take place in the medium term, long term, or indeed not at all, we suggest it is worth thinking creatively through approaches to media on an all-island basis. In this report, we argue that the role that media would play in democratic and cultural terms in a new Ireland is of crucial importance. We ask: what would happen to the existing PSM organisations in the event of the reunification of Ireland?; Would BBC Northern Ireland simply be subsumed into RTÉ, taking on its staff and its assets, or would a completely new PSM organisation be created?; Or would PSM survive in a reunified Ireland at all? We set out five possible options, concluding that new PSM provision is the best way forward. A new PSM organisation could only come about following extensive negotiations, factoring in complicated legal deliberations and consultation with all parts of the media sector – in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. And that’s before you get to asking the audience what kind of media provision they might want. Yet one question is at the crux of our discussion here: if you started with something close to a blank piece of paper, what kind of PSM organisation would you create for a new Ireland? In response to this, we propose a new PSM organisation for a new country: Public Media Ireland.