It's 'lights, camera, action' for the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland as the Bobby Sands film it funded premieres in Cannes and a new broadcasting Bill is introduced, writes  MICHAEL DWYER.

THIS WILL BE a particularly busy and interesting week for the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI). Minister for Communications Eamon Ryan is expected to introduce a wide-ranging new broadcasting Bill in the Dáil today. Tomorrow night, the BCI-funded film Hunger, dealing with the last six weeks in the life of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, will have its world premiere in a prestigious slot at the Festival de Cannes.

Established in 2001, the BCI is an independent statutory organisation responsible for a number of key areas regarding television and radio services in Ireland. Its functions include licensing, monitoring and development work, and it has a fund to support independent TV and radio production.

"We have two rounds every year and so far we have given out €44 million," says BCI chairman Conor Maguire. "Of that, we have given €6.5 million to feature films." The funding comes from the five per cent of the licence fee that is devoted to the broadcasting fund. The scheme marked the end of the era whereby the entire revenue from the licence fee went to RTÉ.

"It's a novel approach," says Maguire, "and it's being watched by other jurisdictions. We are taking some of what would be regarded as the public service broadcaster's source of income and applying it across the board. Of course, programmes broadcast on RTÉ are very much part of the scheme as well."

Asked about the new broadcasting Bill, Maguire says: "We know from our dealings with the department the way they are thinking, but we haven't been given the text of the Bill, so we don't know exactly what's going to be in it. We expect that our scheme will continue as it's not a discretionary grant from the State and it draws directly from the percentage we get of the licence fee."

One of the changes Maguire and BCI chief executive Michael O'Keeffe anticipate in the Bill is the new Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) legislation. "We will be subsumed into that as the single content regulator for both RTÉ and the independent sector."

Where does this leave the RTÉ Authority? "It will not regulate as it does at the moment," says O'Keeffe. "The RTÉ Authority will still exist, but effectively as a board of directors, as opposed to being a regulator, and they will be responsible to the BAI. Within that you'll also have the complaints commission, which will have a beefed up mechanism to deal with any complaints about the public sector and the private sector."

The Minister is also likely to announce a new free TV service proposed by the Irish Film Board - the Irish Film Channel, which will be devoted to Irish, European and international films. "We would be very supportive of that," says Maguire.

Given that both the BCI and the film board funded such recent Irish productions as Garageand Kings, is there not an overlap in their functions?

"We come at it from a different perspective," says Maguire. "The BCI's Sound Vision scheme started with a previous project we had, New Adventures in Broadcasting, which was designed to stimulate the broadcasting sector from a low grant basis, and that dealt primarily with independent radio productions." The scheme went on to fund TV production, including feature films, some of which - Garageand Kingsfor example - went on cinema release first, whereas Edenwas shown on RTE in March before going on cinema release in Dublin later this month.

"You have to go back to what the Sound Vision scheme is about," Maguire explains. "We're now in the sixth round of the scheme, which was introduced in 2005. It covers broadcasting, both radio and television. Within the television side, we also support feature films. The fact that a project happens to be a feature film is an addition, but not a requirement. It's also a bonus in terms of reaching an audience."

FEATURING GERMAN-BORN, Killarney-raised actor Michael Fassbender as Bobby Sands, Hungerreceived €300,000 from the BCI, with the balance of its budget provided by Channel 4 and Northern Ireland Screen. Unlike the great majority of beneficiaries from the Sound Vision fund, Hungeris primarily a British production in terms of its director, producers and key crew.

"There's nothing to stop it being a non-Irish production," says Maguire. "Obviously, films such as Garageand Edenhave been Irish-based productions. However, there's nothing to stop, for example, a French production from applying as long as the theme is Irish, but that hasn't happened."

An essential element in receiving BCI funding is that there is a commitment to broadcast the project at peak time on a free-to-air channel. As this requirement covers the 32 counties, that channel can be Channel 4, as in the case of Hunger, although the majority of BCI-funded feature films have received a commitment to broadcast from RTÉ, TV3 and TG4.

The BCI arranges independent panels to assess all applications to the scheme. "They normally ask for 100 per cent of the budget, or a lot more than they ultimately will get," says Maguire, "but we know that and they know that. When the applicants have met all the criteria for funding under the scheme, and their content has been approved, a list is sent to the board.

"In the context of the number of applications that have been approved, recommendations are made as to how much funding each project should receive. If a project is turned down, it may be submitted one more time, and we are there to help the producers with their revised submission."

Funding is not driven by potential ratings, and 34 per cent of TV productions funded by the BCI last year were Irish-language or bilingual programmes. "I think the scheme would fall if it were driven by ratings," Maguire says. "In fact, we want to enable productions that might not otherwise have seen the light of day, provided, of course, that they are sufficiently meritorious."

O'Keeffe cites Kings, which is bilingual and predominantly in Irish, as an example: "We know that Kingswould not have been made without the funding support we gave it. TG4 wanted to make a film of that particular story for a long time, but they did not have the funding."

PRIOR TO THE INTRODUCTION of the BCI's Sound Vision scheme, Irish radio programmes were financed entirely from existing station budgets, albeit with commercial sponsorship in some cases. "That's true," Maguire says. "The genesis of the BCI was the IRTC , which was set up to regulate the independent radio and television sector. The emphasis was on radio then because our only remit for television was TV3. The Broadcasting Act changed all that and spread it across the whole sector, including the funding of independent radio and television programmes to be broadcast on RTÉ."

Why does radio production need external funding, given that it's relatively inexpensive? "The radio listenership in this country is higher per capita than any jurisdiction in Europe," replies Maguire. "The listeners deserve their quality. There will always be a tension within the granting of the monies because of the level required to make a visual production. We are dispersing approximately €2 million per annum for radio and around €7 million for television."

O'Keeffe adds: "We have seen the development of an independent radio sector here over the past two years, which has come about as a result of the money that has come in from this scheme. Most of the radio projects we fund are documentaries."

He notes that the winner of the award for best radio documentary at last month's Celtic Media Festival in Galway was an independent Irish radio production, Remembering Hanna Greally, produced by Mary Owens for Well Said Productions.

I raise the point that, whereas counties across the country are very well served in terms of local radio, most Dublin stations are wall-to-wall pop music outlets that are indistinguishable from each other. "You have Dublin City FM, which used to be Anna Livia," O'Keeffe notes.

"The point you make about Dublin is a good one," Maguire adds. "The radio side is a different challenge for us. That's where all out licensing arrangements have been concentrated, and they have been dictated by the available spectrum. We make sure that what we're doing is a response to a demand as opposed to top-down regulation. One of the factors in Dublin is the strength of RTÉ Radio 1. Its audience is huge compared to the rest of the country."

Isn't that at least partly because there's no Dublin talk station as an alternative? And didn't Radio 1 have a vast audience across the country before the advent of such conspicuously successful local stations from Highland Radio in Donegal to Radio Kerry? "It's a difficult one," says O'Keeffe. "We had Newstalk as a Dublin station before it went national. We want diversity and obviously, a speech station would do that, but there doesn't seem to be an appetite for doing it out there."

He points out that all the independent radio stations remain bound by a requirement that 20 per cent of all content is made up of news and current affairs. Do they all really meet that? "Yes, they do," Maguire says, "and they are monitored to ensure that they do."

The next major development is digital radio. "It's taking off very slowly in Britain," O'Keeffe says, "and RTÉ is running a trial at the moment. It will be possible to have multiple radio channels, and we have to look at what that will do to the level of quality we have at present."

Meanwhile, shortly after attending the world premiere of Hungerin Cannes tomorrow night, Conor Maguire will be returning to his day job. As a senior counsel, his clients include former taoiseach Bertie Ahern at the Mahon Tribunal. "I'm still involved, as Bertie is, and we'll be back up for three days in the latter part of May. As long as they don't make a feature film about the tribunal . . . "