While Dublin is the stronghold for student newspapers, Cork, Limerick and Galway leave the capital silent when it comes to campus radio. All three cities have student stations with five-year "community of interest" licences from the Independent Radio and Television Commission (IRTC).
Cork Campus Radio (94.7 FM) serves UCC and Cork Institute of Technology. Limerick's Wired FM (96.8 FM) is spread across three campuses - the University of Limerick, Mary Immaculate College of Education and Limerick Institute of Technology. Galway's FLIRT FM (105.6 FM) is a joint venture between the students of NUI Galway and the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology. On other campuses around Ireland students get one- or two-week licences from the IRTC to broadcast at times such as freshers' week and rag week. Even second-level schools (notably Blackrock College near Dublin) have availed of such short-term licences.
Student radio is not short on quality. Cork Campus Radio scooped an ESB National Media Award for social-issues radio journalism for documentaries on the death penalty and profiling a UCC student who became HIV-positive after a one-night stand. The news coverage on Galway's FLIRT FM over the last week is a good illustration of how seriously the station takes its business. Its Teatime news programme featured Magill editor Emily O'Reilly reporting on the Flood tribunal and Irish Times columnist Fintan O'Toole discussing the trial of Bill Clinton. Interspersed were reports from student volunteers on local and campus issues.
Flirt FM also includes sport, documentaries and political satire. However, station manager Yvonne Igoe says music policy is as important as speech-based programming. "Naturally, students are interested in what's going on outside campus, but at the same time, we don't want to overlap with mainstream radio. We have to offer them something they can't get elsewhere. "Some people aren't willing to listen to speech-based programmes, so we have a lot of music-based programmes to cater for people of different tastes: everything from funk to traditional music.
"We don't have play-lists. We do play some chart music but our presenters aren't forced to play it. It means we can give airplay to some of the more offbeat bands."
The students are keen to get the community in Galway city involved in programming. Adult education and second-level students, as well as members of the local travelling community, are especially involved in weekend and summertime programming.
For both music and speech-based programming, the station's philosophy is to "give the presenter the opportunity to go off on a tangent. Sometimes it's amusing and sometimes it falls flat on its face but you have to give them the opportunity," Igoe says. "For anyone interested in a start in broadcasting it's invaluable experience."
Inevitably, the cloud on the horizon is funding. FLIRT FM is financed modesty by the capitation fee paid by students in NUI Galway and GMIT. The station's head of news, Gavin Jennings, says the studios are beginning to show the strain.
"When you start off at the station, you've great ideas about what you'd like to do, but you find your job is taken up with keeping the quality of the existing programming high and keeping the station on the air. We manage to keep broadcasting by the skin of our teeth."
