Somewhere in the Dublin mountains, there's an antenna stuck to a wall. A cable runs from the antenna into a shed, where it connects to a device in the corner about the size of a small suitcase.
The device is a radio transmitter, and it beams out dance music, or country, indie rock, jazz or pop. Or at least it used to. Because this time-tested little arrangement of equipment, repeated two or three dozen times in these hills, and reproduced as many more times around the rest of the State, has been subjected to an unprecedented crackdown. Pirate radio is being systematically switched off.
The Office of the Director of Telecommunications Regulation (ODTR) claims it has caused no fewer than 36 unlicensed transmitters to go off air in the past several weeks. This zealous cleansing of the airwaves, the removal of most of the State's radio stations, has been accompanied by little drama, publicity - or resistance.
Unlike in 1983, when the late Chris Cary's Radio Nova was raided after it got too big for its unlicensed breeches, officials have scarcely gone after the station operators at all; many run legitimate businesses alongside their city studios, and disrupting them could get legally messy. Instead, ODTR officials have been painstakingly tracking down those suitcase-size transmitters which simply pump out a signal that's relayed from a studio. Then they've laid down the law to the people who own the land where the gear is located, knocking on doors and sending threatening letters (including an attachment from the non-existent-since-1997 "Minister for Transport, Energy and Communications").
And so, thanks to what the ODTR crowingly calls this "high-impact, low-resource" approach, the airwaves are being made safe for the corporate broadcasters who have paid to monopolise them.
Like the IT sector, which was delighted to extol the virtues of "free markets" when times were good but now expects ever-more Government assistance, the entrepreneurs of licensed commercial radio are inclined to be picky about the sort of competition they welcome. The pirating backgrounds of many legitimate broadcasters notwithstanding, they openly seek to eliminate competitors who don't face the same costs and regulations that they do.
The ODTR doesn't deny that it had heard complaints from legal broadcasters who were browned off at the impunity of the pirates. It says, however, that the campaign against illegal transmitters has nothing to do with the imminent arrival of more commercial stations, including two ambitious and politically well connected ones in Dublin: a dance-led station, Spin FM (where accountant Ossie Kilkenny is pulling the strings and Denis O'Brien is in the background), and country station Star FM (led by former Crimeline presenter David Harvey).
Pirate-radio insiders are inclined to be sceptical. They point to the fact that the first Dublin hilltop targeted last month was home to - you guessed it - dance-music and country-music pirates. "Pure coincidence," says the ODTR. Its spokeswoman pointed out that the ODTR's campaign goes right around the State. She could not, however, offer an adequate explanation as to why 2001 is the right time to enforce legislation that dates from 1926 and 1988, explaining only that this new scare-the-landowner strategy has been about a year in the making.
If a State agency had shut down the printing presses of 36 local newspapers, there would be uproar. We're less inclined to think of music broadcasts as free speech; moreover, most of us buy the line about the airwaves being a finite resource that needs careful protection. To be sure, few people would argue that frequencies allotted in a public and accountable process to licensed operators shouldn't be reasonably protected from interference. Still fewer would say that emergency channels shouldn't be kept clear. However, this crackdown goes far beyond such concerns; in fact, before the purge, the busy Dublin FM spectrum had by and large been a good example of people behaving responsibly without regulation. Anarchy in action, if you like.
We can't quantify how important pirate stations are, or were, to listeners: the JNLR ratings - commissioned and controlled by a committee that includes the legal broadcasters - do not include unlicensed stations. Certainly, when pirates promote, say, dance events, they can easily attract hundreds of people without advertising anywhere but on air. In Limerick, Galtee Radio is widely seen as giving the licensed stations a run for their money - local businesses know it and advertise heavily. (Ludicrously, these advertisers could be liable for prosecution.) It's hardly a coincidence that, as I write, Limerick is the only place where most pirates stubbornly fly the flag.
"Money talks," one seasoned radio observer told me this week, and a handful of pirates can earn good money from ads and events. Money's voice, he said, will carry Dublin's illegal transmitters back into the mountains, into new sheds and garages, where the chase can begin again.
See www.radiowaves.fm for the latest newson pirate-radio shutdowns and returns
Mary Holland is on leave
hbrowne@irish-times.ie