Citizens' Assembly Proceedings to be Live Streamed

19.08.2016

The government’s planned Citizens’ Assembly which will consider a referendum on the Eighth Amendment is to be live streamed on a purpose-built website, according to a government tender. The government is inviting submissions from companies willing to provide “live streaming/broadcasting” of the Citizens’ Assembly which will be convened from October.

The assembly will have 100 members including a chairperson and 99 citizens who will be selected by a polling firm as a representative sample of the country’s population. The assembly will hold up to ten weekend gatherings over the space of a year, and members will typically meet in an as yet unspecified hotel located within 20km of Dublin on a Friday evening through to Sunday afternoon.

Those involved will compile a report on the issue of the Eighth Amendment and will provide recommendations on the matter to the Government within one year from the date of the first assembly meeting”.

According to the tender document, all plenary sessions of the assembly will be live streamed along with podium speeches and contributions from the floor. Informal aspects of the event need not be filmed, it says.

Live broadcasts of the meetings will be carried on www.citizenassembly.ie, and edited videos will later be uploaded to a dedicated YouTube account. The stream will also be enabled for embedding on other websites interested in showing meetings, “thereby extending the range of websites carrying the live proceedings”.

The Irish Times. August 19.