The weather could not have been more brilliant that July morning as we gathered to launch Ireland's first independent radio station. For the previous three weeks we had been working morning, noon and night to prepare for the launch.
After February 1989, when the independent licences were granted, the IRTC was anxious that one station should go on air, believing all the others would soon follow. It allowed Capital a derogation from the 20 per cent news requirement for a month. So there we were in a collection of Portakabins on the roof of the St Stephen's Green shopping centre listening to Phil Lynott's Our Town, the very first record played on independent radio in Ireland.
We were determined in the newsroom cabin that our service would have a strong Dublin identity. This precipitated our first crisis. A newspaper report that morning indicated that a Garda inquiry was being considered into planning in Dublin.
We sought reaction to advance the story. The then Fine Gael spokesman on the Environment, Alan Shatter, was not answering his phone, neither was his Labour counterpart, Ruairi Quinn. But Eamon Gilmore, then the Workers Party spokesman on the Environment, was champing at the bit. What he said was the first item on our first bulletin at 8 a.m.
Meanwhile, the station was being launched at a glittering breakfast in the Berkeley Court Hotel. Shortly after our 9 a.m. news, the station's managing director, Mike Hogan, arrived in our Portakabin in an agitated state. The Minister for Communications and Justice, Mr Burke, was coming behind him. Mr Burke had just opened the station at the Berkeley Court.
Mike had just enough time to tell us the Minister had heard the news on the car radio en route to the station and threw a tantrum. Then Mr Burke arrived, suave and charming and greeting everyone.
He called me outside for a word. We went out of earshot behind one of the Portakabins, where I experienced the full force of his uncomplicated wrath. "Did you not know one of the reasons we set these stations up was to get these people [Workers Party] off the air?" I recall him saying. I did not.
The implication of his outburst was clear. Take the item off the air - but how could we, not least as it was with the first news item on the first independent radio station in the State? It was allowed its natural life through the morning bulletins.
At lunchtime there was a phone call for me from RTE. Had I heard that Mr Burke had said he was unaware of the news derogation being allowed to Capital and, as far as he was concerned, the 20 per cent requirement would be implemented in full from that day? There was consternation. At 10 o'clock that night three of us sat around a microphone in a studio talking about radio for two hours.
I met Mr Burke at the signing of the contract with Century Radio at the IRTC offices weeks later. I asked him for a comment on the event. He suggested we go to a corridor outside as it was quieter.
When we were there, he said: "I was listening to you guys that night [as we talked about radio], I really felt for ye."
I did the interview and left.