Irish Pirate Radio - Pirate Radio Today

Pirate Radio Today

In 2002 a new radio regulation body, the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg), was founded by the Irish government to replace the Office of the Director of Telecommunications Regulation (ODTR). Part of the reason for the change was pressure from the licenced radio community, which felt that pirate operators were taking their listeners, and that a level playing field needed to be restored.

ComReg had much more funding, staff and resources than its predecessor – and these were put to use in May 2003, when a major crackdown on Dublin pirates saw virtually every station wiped off the band. This series of raids, which was conducted over two days and involved Garda Síochána officers and ESB staff, was referred to as "Black Tuesday" by the free radio community.

Follow-up action in the years to come meant that any station that ventured on air usually didn't last that long – with the officials often tracking down and closing operators sometimes within five working days. The hardline stance has also been extended to other pirate heartlands such as Cork, Limerick and the border counties. For the first time, ComReg began to carry out raids at night and weekends – removing the only remaining "safe" time to broadcast without a licence.

Today Ireland has few pirate stations. In Dublin a couple venture on air mainly at the weekends, using low power. Outside Dublin there are a few larger, full-time operators left, but they generally don't tend to last long. Stations which operate intermittently, or regularly change name and/or location tend to survive longer (many have never been raided) although obviously have more difficulty building up a substantial listenership and hence are perceived as being less of a threat to the licenced stations.

ComReg's policy has come under criticism from many in the radio industry, who believe that the organisation should focus its resources on stations which cause interference, rather than simply carrying out blanket raids on all stations. These critics point out that while a mechanism has been put in place to remove pirates within a week, little has been done to free up the procedures for starting a licenced radio station. They call for a more tolerant attitude towards benevolent pirates, until a framework is introduced to allow niche stations to be set up and run at low cost with less strict regulation.

Many of the remaining stations are so-called "Border Blasters", which operate from just inside the Republic of Ireland, in counties Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan and broadcasting with directional antennas in to Northern Ireland. These stations had been generally more tolerated by Comreg/ODTR/DOC due to the broadcasts being aimed across the border, and not taking advertising or listenership to a significant degree from stations licenced by the BCI. However in recent years the main border pirates have been the target of repeated raids, with the largest stations forced off-air. A significant increase in the number of legal FM radio stations in Northern Ireland and increased cross-border co-operation between COMREG and the UK's OFCOM has led to this increased action towards the 'Border Blasters'

In some cases, the issuing of licences to new stations to broadcast in a genre traditionally served by pirate radio has led to local pirates closing down as their listeners, staff and advertisers move to the licenced station. In Dublin, Spin 1038 took much of the youth-oriented audience and Dublin's Country Mix 106.8 took from country music pirates.

An addition to pirate radio, particularly in the late 1990s has been a number of Catholic churches, particularly in rural areas, who broadcast their services at the high frequency end of the FM band, or on frequencies around 27 MHz (an arrangement not permitted by legal 27 MHz CB) for parishioners who cannot attend personally. The high end of the FM band was favoured by church broadcasters using the domestic FM band, as this was mostly unused for legal stations outside Dublin and Cork. The church broadcasters were largely ignored until 2006 when Comreg contacted a number of churches warning them to stop the transmissions, and claimed the broadcasts were suspected of interfering with airband frequencies. (A few months after this move the high end of the FM band became populated by transmitters for the almost national roll-out of Newstalk radio, which previously broadcast to Dublin only). The 2006 controversy made international news, after the issue was aired on RTÉ's Liveline radio show. Shortly afterwards the authorities introduced a new licence scheme (similar to one in the UK) that would allow a frequency band just above the legal 27 MHz CB band to be used for this purpose. Listeners would have to purchase scanners or other special receivers capable of receiving 27.5–28 MHz. Another form of religious broadcast to appear in Ireland in the 1990s was the many FM and AM relays of the UK based UCB (United Christian Broadcasters) and to a lesser extent the related CrossRhythms station from satellite. However these re-broadcasts have now mostly ceased.

Unlicensed radio was just getting back up to speed in Dublin but on Friday 13 April 2007 an apparent raid by Comreg on a two year old Dublin Pirate station "Fun FM" has sparked fear into the pirate community. Other stations have apparently received warnings too and long running youth dance station Pulse FM 94.6 have decided to call it a day and closed down that same Friday at 8.45pm. But that was only to change their name to Dance fm 94.6 by doing this com reg would have to set up a whole new investigation.

Galaxy FM 91.6 Ceased broadcasting on the final week of September 2007, for a reason which is unsure. The station's Bebo Profile says "due to reasons out of our control" which could indicate a raid, possibly due to Galaxy not being able to keep operations secretive. Galaxy offered a strong line up of presenters from ex-pirates such as Pulse, Club, Capital and Freedom FM.