European and Local Elections : The Coverage and Count Process.

This course will be run jointly with Sarah Kieran and Simon Devilly and will broadly cover the following content:

• Understanding the Constituencies
• How European Elections are run
• Understanding Coimisiún na Meán guidelines and the remit of the Coimisiun
• How to practically comply with the Guidelines
• Preparing a station coverage statement
• How to record coverage
• How to deal with complaints 
• How to approach fairness
• Political Advertising
• Overview of Structures, Electoral areas and key issues
• Key personalites, polls and major issues
• Calculating the Quota, how votes are transferred, distribution of surplus, reporting on tallies
• Understanding PR-STV counts and count results coverage

Simon Devilly - Media and Communications Consultant

Simon is a media and communications consultant, over the past twenty years he has devised and delivered training to a wide range of clients many of them in the community, voluntary and social affairs sectors in which he has a particular interest. In the lead up to the Local and European elections in 2014 and 2019 and again in the lead up to the General Elections in 2016 and 2020 Simon has delivered training on reporting on election campaigns, results coverage and understanding the operations of counts under PR – STV for Learning Waves. As a former senior producer with RTE, Simon has many years experience of editorial decision making as a professional journalist. During his 16 years with the national broadcaster, he worked as producer / series producer on many of their flagship current affairs programmes He also held the position of producer in charge of special events – Current Affairs at RTE Radio, in which role he was involved in production and planning of coverage for many major events including General, European and Local elections, state visits and political party conferences.

Sarah Kieran - Principal, MediaLawyer Solicitors

Sarah the Principal of MediaLawyer, Solicitors, a boutique legal firm providing legal services to the media and entertainment industries. She is an Irish qualified solicitor who started her career as a media lawyer in the Irish public service broadcaster, RTÉ, for six years. While there she provided extensive pre-publication advice, working also on litigation and broadcasting regulation before moving to Brussels to work in European regulation and policy making. She has worked on many of the flagship current affairs and factual programmes produced in the Irish market. She has also been involved in many high-profile litigation actions for defamation, breach of privacy and copyright infringement. She represented RTÉ at the Barr Tribunal. More recently she has worked with many of the leading independent production companies and online publishers in Ireland dealing with pre-publication compliance, contracts and any litigation arising out of such matters. She has also advised on compliance with the new Data Protection regime introduced in May 2018 and since then has dealt with a number of breach notifications for her clients. She has extensive experience of responding to complaints made under the various Comisiún na Meán programming codes.