Irish Lifetime Licences

Most licensees will by now have received letters from the regulator ComReg informing them that the lifetime licences which will commence to be issued with effect from 1 June will be Amateur Radio Licences.

These letters came as a surprise to all as the documentation published by ComReg about the lifetime
licence was in the context of Experimenter Licences.

There was no discussion between ComReg and the Irish Radio Transmitters Society on this matter nor was there any indication of an intention to change to Amateur Licences despite our meeting with ComReg on 12 February at which the Lifetime Licence was discussed.

The Committee at its meeting on 16 May had a lengthy, open and wide ranging discussion on the matter to which
virtually all present contributed. In the course of the
discussion it became clear that while two Clubs were
fundamentally opposed to the change, the representatives of other clubs present and the great majority of the Committee members agreed that on balance the change was at worst neutral and at best beneficial in terms of frequency allocation and protection.

There was general agreement that it would have been more satisfactory had the Society been consulted or at least given notice of the intended change. This would have been more in keeping with the spirit of partnership and cooperation that the Society has been seeking to cultivate with ComReg for some time and demonstrated by the recent agreements on 5 MHz and 500 kHz licences. It would seem that the commercially sensitive nature of some ComReg regulations militated against discussing with the Society draft regulations that had no commercial sensitivity whatsoever.

At the conclusion of the discussion the consensus was that a letter should be sent to ComReg expressing disappointment at the lack of consultation or even notification of the change and pointing out that all of the frequency bands in the European Common Allocations Table and ComReg’s Radio Frequency Plan for Ireland which are allocated to the Amateur Service should be automatically made available under the new Amateur Radio lifetime licences. This would result in considerable extra spectrum particularly in the microwave region.

The letter should also request ComReg to publish on its website the definition of Amateur Radio as contained in the ITU Radio Regulations as this definition highlights the self training and technical investigations aspects of amateur radio which by their very nature involve experimentation.

Source: IRTS