Another Irish answer to an Irish problem?

If you're into Irish language and literature, you can stand accused. Either you're a diddly-eye dodo whose politics stop at Padraig Pearse, or an upwardly mobile media babe en route, or ar mbothar, to multi-channel land.

But this week's pitched battle about the cost and customs of TnaG exposes a new set of oppositions within the long-running row about the State's first official language, when Irish-language media activists roared "dishonest!" at the comments of one Donncha O hEallaithe, a former pirate leader of Connemara community television, now third-level maths lecturer and member of TnaG's advisory council.

"I did go over the top with words like `ethnic cleansing'," O hEallaithe reflects about his contentious article in Force 10, the Sligo magazine guest-edited for this issue by his former pirate colleague, filmmaker and RTE Authority member, Bob Quinn.

"But when Irish-language programmes command six-figure audiences on RTE and only 10,000 viewers on TnaG, there's a question to be asked," he elaborates. "I don't want TnaG to be closed down. I want an open debate about its purpose, one where we are not hurling words of abuse at each other. Where is it going? Who is it for?"

Many opponents of TnaG would answer, "Nowhere". Its cost, its questionable audience penetration, even its motives have raised hackles since it was launched at Hallowe'en two years ago. Is it a sop to aspirations past their sell-by date, a service to an Irish-speaking community based largely in rural areas, or a genuine attempt to service a growing, if minority, interest in speaking Irish as a second language?

With Ms Sile de Valera's new Broadcasting Bill set to be presented in the Dail next spring, the station is not yet engaging publicly in the issues Mr O hEallaithe raises, and has fought back against financial and marketing criticisms by releasing statistics which interpret its audience penetration as deeper than that of Sky television.

The row is not welcome. But questions remain, not least about the level of cohesion in strategies and attitudes towards the Irish language.

"If you'd been kicked as many times as TnaG, wouldn't you be defensive?" asks Bob Quinn. "At a certain stage you have to stop fearing you will give ammunition to your enemies, so I welcome the debate. This unseemly, appalling, disgraceful attack on Mr O hEallaithe is happening because he is asking questions which mean facing up to reality."

The nub of the question is whether TnaG may be another Irish answer to an Irish problem, and an expensive one at that. With a name that sounds like a boy band, TnaG is a rebranding exercise on a scale proportionately as ambitious as was Tony Blair's Cool Britannia. Making Irish funky, not freaky, was seen as an essential cultural repositioning necessary if the language and its value system were to be spared linguistic extinction.

That porridge-like equivalence of culture and language, which had marked the aspirations of Irish Ireland, made Irish identity stutter for so long as it was written in stone. But it's an unexpected challenge to hear that the old adage of tir agus teanga might now need disentangling from another perspective, namely the allegation that TnaG's linguistic models do not offer Gaeltacht communities a sufficiently powerful means of finding cultural resonance, while losing other potential Irish-language viewers to the commercial attractions of cable land.

"So much of the discourse about the Irish language happens within an imposed framework," O hEallaithe comments. "It is a sacred cow we are all supposed to adore. The Irish language is tangled up with emotions and passions, with whether you are nationalist or anti-nationalist, revivalist or anti-revivalist. But it is not a matter of national identity in the Gaeltacht areas, it is about local identity."

AT first sight the row could seem like a case of sour grapes meets anti-revisionism. O hEallaithe and Quinn had argued against setting up a national Irish-language station in favour of one which would instead be rooted in the Gaeltacht communities, and they also opposed its transmission on UHF rather than VHF frequencies because those were harder to receive in the same areas.

Both men also assert that TnaG is bypassing stories and features of local interest in favour of what it perceives to be national stories: Mr O hEallaithe cites a discussion on the seaweed industry which was turned down by TnaG and later picked up by RTE's Leargas.

"Charles Haughey had said he would establish a Gaeltacht community television service, but powerful Irish-language activists put him off," says Mr O hEallaithe. He declines to identify them as belonging to Conradh na Gaeilge or Bord na Gaeilge.

His interest in the relationship between the Irish language and the Gaeltacht communities happens "not for ideological reasons or cultural dominance, but for everyday ones.It is the lifeblood of the community." The Gaeltachta are suffering, he reasons, because the State is piggybacking a national Irish language policy on their backs.

"The loss of the language is a different loss in Connemara than in Ireland as a whole. If the language of communication dies here, then the whole community is ruptured," Mr O hEallaithe reckons. "It would be much preferable if the language of Connemara was a language other than Irish so that the issues would be clearer - if it were Connemarese, for example."

On Tuesday last Ms de Valera expanded on her plans for a new Broadcasting Act to a joint Oireachtas committee, where she developed ideas first floated in a statement in July. TnaG's statutory position may change from its present level as a legal part of RTE to a new form of statutory autonomy, which could in turn enable it to develop programming and commercial strategies over three channels, as opposed to its current single-channel capacity.

The prospects are a matter of speculation, but they could include a commercially-attractive programme packet geared towards the Irish diaspora, and would in theory make it possible to introduce a Gaeltacht community service, complementary to but distinct from the present schedule on TnaG.

"I'm not a revivalist," Mr O hEallaithe concludes. "I come from Clonmel and I would consider it an act of cultural vandalism if anyone tried to take the English language away from the people there. The State has always had difficulty dealing with minorities, whether they be Protestants in the early days, travellers, or Gaeltacht communities now.

"I want a situation where you can live in either language, and still fit comfortably into this State."