An Irishman's Diary

There are two overwhelming arguments for the increased funding of RTÉ, whether through a raised licence fee or a larger State subsidy (or both) - Mary Raftery and Mick Peelo. Or, rather, what they represent of the best in our national broadcaster.

RTÉ, radio and television, excelled itself in its coverage of the fall-out from the Prime Time programme, Cardinal Secrets. As it did with the programme itself. And surely there is no greater indicator of the place RTÉ holds in our lives as a national institution than that among the first places our afflicted went for comfort following that programme was to Liveline, Marian Finucane, Gerry Ryan, Today with Pat Kenny, Morning Ireland, Five Seven Live, and Tonight with Vincent Browne.

On these programmes many victims of clerical child sex abuse and their relatives relayed, often for the first time, tales of previously untold misery - prompted, in many cases, by the confident telling of similar tales by fellow victims Colm O'Gorman, Andrew Madden, and Marie Collins on Prime Time, The Late Late Show and Questions and Answers.

Public service

This is not to diminish the performance of our commercial broadcasters on this issue. Rather, it is intended to underline the contribution good public service broadcasting can make. And in Ireland it is RTÉ's news and current affairs output which is central to that contribution.

We must fund it properly. It has shown what it can do with diminishing resources in a climate of lowering morale. It has shown that despite those impostors, its commitment to serving the Irish people with quality broadcasting remains constant.

Lest the usual suspects dismiss these sentiments as yet more of the same from a so-called "Irish Times/RTÉ axis", I speak as someone who began his journalistic career as an outlaw (in pirate radio) where, in a long-fought campaign for independent broadcasting in Ireland we sans-culottes witnessed a side of the national broadcaster which remains as memorable as it was far from endearing.

It left a lingering aftertaste which may have contributed when I expressed exasperation at the apparent fact that it has so often taken outside broadcasters to alert us to scandals in our midst. On April 3rd last in these pages I wrote: "One has to ask why it took the BBC to make last night's Suing the Pope programme. Why is it that so many of the most effective investigative television programmes about Irish affairs have been made by British channels? Why did RTÉ not produce Suing the Pope? Or TV3? Or TG4? The material was on their doorstep. And though they may say to the print media, 'What did you do?', that really is not the point.

"Susan O'Keeffe had to go to Granada Television to make the Where's the Beef programme in 1991 which led to the Beef Tribunal. And in 1994 it was Chris Moore of UTV's Counterpoint programme who exposed Father Brendan Smyth.

"The print media, through the work of Alison O'Connor, Veronica Guerin, Jim Cusack, who first broke the story in the 1980s, and Ger Walsh of the Wexford People could hardly have brought the story further.

"It needed TV. Years of excellent investigative print journalism on paedophile priests in Ferns was unable to achieve the same impact as 50 minutes of victims and their families telling their stories to camera."

National broadcaster

RTÉ in particular, as our subsidised national broadcaster, deserved such criticism, I then believed. But even then I acknowledged that "there have been exceptions on Irish television, of course. There was Mary Raftery's hard-hitting States of Fear in 1999 and Paul Cunningham's Bad Blood, last year, about how Irish haemophiliacs were infected through blood supplies from the US. And Brendan O'Brien's recent Prime Time on the Middle East."

Prime Time is having a paticularly good run at the moment also. Its programmes on barristers' tribunal fees, dangerous waste in Tipperary, and the McBrearty family in Donegal, all broadcast since Cardinal Secrets, come to mind.

And just as I dished out the brickbats to RTÉ last April, allow me now have the grace to acknowledge credit where it is indeed due. RTÉ deserves praise. It seems merely decent to acknowledge the great work our national broadcaster has done in recent weeks and, by extension, reflect on the generally excellent service it provides in news and current affairs, both on radio and TV. It has no equal on the island.

Nor can its Lyric FM be equalled by any other station when it comes to a music service. Then there is RTÉ's coverage of the arts, its dramatisations, its coverage of Irish-language issues and Irish traditional music.

Probably for the very first time since it jammed our transmission signal at Sunshine Radio back in the 1980s, when it tried to bully us off the air, I am beginning to achieve an objective realisation of RTÉ's unique value in the cultural life of Ireland. I am beginning to feel free to acknowledge it as the non pareil among our broadcasters.

Statutory inquiry

It also has Mary Raftery of course. This extraordinary woman has shown what good investigative journalism can achieve. Because of her States of Fear programme we have the Laffoy Commission, now addressing how children were treated in institutions in Ireland. And it seems likely that, thanks to her and Mick Peelo's work on Cardinal Secrets - and the fall-out therefrom - we will soon have a statutory inquiry into clerical child sex abuse in the Republic. Their programme has helped galvanise public and political will in unprecedented determination to root out this great rot once and for all.

Our national broadcaster has been earning its keep. It seems unfair that it should continue to do so with little encouragement and minimal resources. As a society we are in its debt just now. So too are victims of clerical and other forms of child sex abuse. And, even if some senior figures feel differently, the Catholic Church in Ireland is in its debt as well.

What Prime Time/RTÉ have begun in the public heart will, we hope, lead to a better Ireland, particularly for the children. Maybe yet we will cherish them all, truly. And equally!