Teilifís na Gaeilge: Ten Years A-Growing

I have been involved in broadcasting with Radio Telefís Éireann, Ireland's national public broadcast service, for nearly thirty years—first as an archivist and subsequently as a radio and then television producer. I became editor of Irish-language television programs, and, in the last twelve years, I have been involved at senior level in Irish-language and English-language broadcast management. Necessarily, what I say here is colored by that experience; it is a personal view of how matters have evolved. I do not pretend to be dispassionate, but I try to be as objective as possible where personal feeling and some requirement for self-justification are inevitable but, I hope, not smothering.

Teilifís na Gaeilge has just passed a significant anniversary. It celebrated with good cause its achievements—ten years since it came on air on October 31, 1996. Just as important, it will note 2007 as the year when it finally achieved independence, thirteen years after the initial policy decision to establish an independent Irish-language television service was taken by the Irish government in 1994. The Irish language has been an integral part of the story of broadcasting in Ireland since the very inception of Ireland's first radio service, station 2RN, on January 1, 1926. In his opening address on that day, Dubhghlas De hÍde—founder of the Gaelic League, future president of Ireland, and champion of the need to de-Anglicize Ireland—pronounced:

Tá Éire ar bhóthar a sláinte ach nil sí slán fós. Is droch spota i gcorp na hÉireann an galldachas seo agus ní beidh Éire slán go ngearrthar amach aisti é. Tá súil agam go mbeidh an gléas gan sreang seo taithneamhach don chorp agus úsáideach don anam san am chéanna.¹

So, from the start broadcasting was to be a means to an end in underpinning an independent state through stressing the exclusively Irish, in this case Gaelic, elements of society. It is fair to say that the idealism of the founders of independent Ireland was tied to the concept of an Irish Ireland. The revival of the Irish language was very much to the fore in the thoughts of at least some of the initial government ministers. When the Gaelic League was set up nearly thirty years beforehand, the Irish language was recognized to be in terminal decline in a number of counties and to be in great danger in the mostly Western counties where Irish was still spoken in the Gaeltacht. At that time, 1891 census figures reported some fourteen percent of the population of Ireland as being able to speak Irish. Most of those people were older, and a fatalistic prognosis for the language was understandable.

In the new dispensation, the enthusiasm of the Gaelic League and its early members had the active support of a sovereign Irish government in restoring Irish to its place as the most-used language of the ordinary people of Ireland. Such enthusiasm was evident in an early decision that all formal education at the primary level would be conducted through the medium of Irish. That many, if not most, of the teachers required to carry out this policy could not themselves speak Irish contributed to incipient cynicism about the language and its place in Irish society. While many enthusiastically and voluntarily attended intensive courses in the Gaeltacht, textbooks and support were continuously lacking. The 1937 Constitution recognizes Irish as the first language of the country, but this has never translated into practical expression in the everyday use of Irish by leading citizens, politicians, or figureheads, or even by the championing of Irish in state institutions. It is fair to say that, on the one hand, the Irish language is officially recognized as representing a unique aspect of Irish identity, but on the other hand, little more than lip service is paid to its use outside formal state occasions.

Perhaps it is the very status of Irish as the first language of the constitution that gives rise to the debate about the Irish language but does little...