Saint Ita’s Hospital Radio is located at St Ita’s Hospital in St Patrick’s Parish, Portrane, Donabate, Co. Dublin. It broadcasts on 89.5 fm locally and globally via an online stream. The Station's first broadcast in December 1983, using home-made equipment, from a storeroom at the hospital. One of the services providedin those early days was a cable television service which piped movies to the wards. With the arrival of cheap VCR's , the requirement for this service diminished and it was discontinued.
St Ita’s Hospital Radio was the first radio station in Ireland to receive one of the new broadcast licenses when the Minister for Communications of the day introduced the broadcasting bill in the late 1980s. The station operated from a modern studio with professional equipment in compliance with the criteria laid down by the Broadcast Authority of Ireland under a 10 year licence until early 2020 when a structual fault necessetated the closure of the studio.
Upon the arrival of Covid 19 before a new studio could be opened and Govenmenet restrictions regarding social distancing and working from home being implemented the station continued to operate remotely for all of 2020 . AT first this was with previously recorded programming. At the end of 2020 with no sign of restrictions lifting our technical team started to work on giving our presenters the ability broadcast live from their own homes . This was implememnt in early January 2021 and has been a huge success to date. In the picture you can see Christine presenting her Program live from her home.
At present we have over 20 volunteers involved the background and on air and we broadcast around the clock
with a mix of live and syndicated shows and our ever popular over night automated play lists. While our music
is primarily middle of the road we always bear in mind the diversity of tastes within the hospital and surrounding
area and endeavor to cater for all musical tastes. you are as likely to hear Elvis Presley as to hear Ed Sheerin
Tuesdays used to feature our popular weekly Hospital Radio Free Bingo for residents, Unfortuantely we had to discontinue our bingo during the restrictions. However we have been working on its return and we now have the technology at out disposal to facilitate radio bingo while still adhering to Social distancing.
We do not have access to any of our phone lines at the moment but we can be contacted by email to studio@hospitalradio.ie or tweet us @ #HospitalRadioIe and we have an active facebook page St. Itas Hospital Radio
In February 2022 we commenced moving into our new Studio back in St. Ita's and hope to have the option of broadcasting from the hospital studio very soon.