Cork City Council to use new system to live-stream meetings 

Cork City Council plans to introduce a new system to improve the viewer experience of its live-streamed council meetings.

The new system will be introduced in phases over the coming months, beginning at tonight's November meeting of council, where the monthly city council meeting will be live-streamed on a new platform using several cameras which will offer different views of the council chamber and of individual speakers.

The system will also feature on-screen information showing the names of speakers, and the agenda items being discussed.

Live

Green Party councillor Oliver Moran told The Echo: “The technology will allow the public to join and see a live version of the agenda and where the meeting is. When a councillor speaks, the camera will automatically change to them and identify who they are.

“Currently, we don’t keep a video record of meetings. In the future, we might, and this means that the public could play back a meeting and jump immediately to a contribution by a particular councillor on a particular agenda item.

“It also means there will be a moving away from the traditional method of ‘catching the Lord Mayor’s eye’ to speak.

“Councillors will indicate they wish to speak by pressing a button and will be automatically added to a queue.

“Voting will change too from the traditional roll-call to voting by pressing a button. As councillors vote, their names will fill up on screen for people joining live.

“There will be a moment to allow voting to settle or for a change of vote before the results are called.”

Discussion

Mr Moran said that, at the training, there was discussion about the rules on people voting for other people who had left the room, and it was decided that no-one is allowed to vote for someone else.

“As we become accustomed to the technology, we may roll out more features. Among these is a clock to limit speaking time, another is potentially allowing members to join meetings remotely to vote.

“Something else that’s a topic of discussion is that we’ll be able to see ourselves on a large screen when we’re talking. Personally, I think I’m going to find that distracting. Maybe others will enjoy it.”

The meetings will no longer be streamed on the council’s YouTube channel. Instead, anyone interested in viewing council meetings from next Monday should log on to: https://corkcity.public-i.tv.