Sir, - It was never going to be easy to launch Teilifis na Gaeilge, not just because of resource limitations but because of a hostile ideological environment, policed by a small number of commentators struggling to be heard above the message from opinion polls showing broad public support for government expenditure on broadcasting in Irish. Now that the dust has settled on the most recent blitz, we should stand back from the fray and reflect on the rationale for the establishment of TnaG.
The rights of lesser-used languages have already been recognised in other European countries where a fully developed sense of national self respect and confidence guarantees access to broadcasting facilities for regional languages. Indeed, European observers of this country are frequently bemused by our love-hate relationship with our older language. They contrast TnG's ability to win awards at international television festivals with the periodic public outbursts of bitterness directed at Irish, under-girded by what looks like a post-colonial shame more appropriate to mid-1800s post-Famine social trauma than to a late 1990s confident multi-culturalism based on economic prosperity. To deprive the Irish-speaking community of what is available to the majority language users - the means of public debate and entertainment in their own language - is to deny its very existence, since television is the most powerful medium for producing people's sense of who they are and who others are across many dimensions of everyday life.
Far from being a sop to unfocused national aspirations past their sell-by date, or another twist in the sad saga of language revivalism, TnaG is based on a recognition of the language rights of an important minority that speaks Irish as its first language and a growing number interested in speaking it as a second. It is noteworthy that attacks on TnaG never discuss either the quality of its output or the language rights of its viewers.
If we recognise these rights as important, how much is too much to pay for them? Compared with S4C in Wales, with a budget over four times as much, TnaG provides a high quality service on a minuscule budget. In 1997, its modest production fund of £7.8 million created 159 full-time equivalent jobs. IBEC estimates that this yielded direct and indirect returns of £2.7 million to the Irish Exchequer. Far from being extragavantly resourced, TnaG deserves a substantial increase in funding so that it can continue to enlarge its reach and its share as S4C has done in Wales.
TnaG's share of the national audience will always be relatively small compared with long-established English language channels, but damning it for that alone surely raises serious questions about our respect for minority rights. A more pertinent question to ask of a new channel is whether there is evidence of stagnation or growth in the audience size over the past 12 months. All the indicators point to very impressive growth. Nielsen's average daily reach for TnaG is 436,000 now, up from 298,000 a year ago. Lansdowne tracking studies show 730,000 adults now claiming to watch regularly/occasionally, up from 500,000 a year ago. Within Gaeltacht areas audience evaluation of the quality of programming is high, with the prime time Irish news programme scoring an approval rating of over 80 per cent. Research also reveals a growing awareness of subtitling in Irish programmes on TnaG and a willingness to watch if subtitles are available.
A major challenge for TnaG is to overcome the deep-rooted dislike of subtitles in Ireland, which differentiates us from other North Europeans and limits our taste for televisual diversity. This would allow more people in the Anglophone majority here, even those who have no interest in learning Irish, to see why TnaG programmes are critically acclaimed. - Yours, etc., Farrel Corcoran,
Chairperson,
RTE Authority,
Donnybrook,
Dublin 4.