WHY? That was the question I heard half a dozen times over the last fortnight, as people puzzled over the arrival of a new national radio station.

Given that the comments more usually made to a radio columnist are slanderous ones about RTE, I would have thought the answer was obvious. But as Radio Ireland started to broadcast, Radio 1 seemed to gather new admirers - many of whom didn't even bother listening to the new service, convinced by the media coverage that it would be a faded facsimile of what the State provides.

It's just as well that one of the few hackneyed thirtysomething classics I haven't heard on Radio Ireland is Carly Simon singing Nobody Does It Better; nobody would believe it. Instead, and appropriately, in the first week Aretha Franklin's demand for Respect was the preferred oldie.

And just a little bit of respectful listening to Radio Ireland would have demonstrated to the indifferent majority that it is not Radio 1 Revisited. Nor it is 2FM II. If there's an Irish model that corresponds to the new broadcaster, it is one of the many low impact local stations that are led by a mix of familiar music, breezy personalities, easy competitions and the odd specialist programme.

The good news for John McColgan & Co is that there's already room for about 20 of these stations, most of them quite successful.

Of course, this is not the whole Radio Ireland story; the station's schedule has several more ambitious pockets. For example, in John Kelly and Donal Dineen, it now holds down the first two places in the list of best Irish DJs - their wonderful evening programmes, however, would not be out of place on some local stations. (The same goes for Karl Tsigdinos's excellent River of Soul at the weekend.)

The programmes with more obvious "national" ambitions - Daybreak, The Last Word, Entertainment Today and the sports coverage - thus far fall well short of the competition.

Perhaps it is a matter of getting used to the medium, but the station's stars are consistently missing the required standard as interviewers. In the first fortnight, it was unusual to hear interviewees with Emily O'Reilly, Gavin Duffy, Philip Boucher Haye's, Clionn Ni Bhuachalla or Ann Marie Hourihane actually complete the point they set out to make. Nearly as rare was a question born of sensitive listening.

WITH most of these, one senses the potential for better performances and for programmes that don't seem so thin; O'Reilly and Hourihane have already done it better elsewhere. One star, however, has quickly realised more potential than most critics reckoned he had in him: Eamon Dunphy has been very, very good indeed.

Who would have thought that the criticism meted out to him would be about giving people an easy ride? Martin McGuinness, Albert Reynolds and Gerry Adams have all had sympathetic hearings, to the anger of some listeners. (Last Thursday's chat with Adams must have had an ironic undercurrent for some in the Dublin audience: while the Sinn Fein leader complained, "live" by mobile phone, about being held for 30 minutes at a checkpoint, many of us were heading into our third hour stuck in city traffic.) It's becoming increasingly clear, though, that Dunphy believes as a general rule in listening to people. It is not too soon to say that a radio star is born.

Entertainment Today, on weekdays from noon to 2 p.m., is perhaps the most coherent of the talk led programmes. It goes one better than the increasingly populist Arts Show in its determination to avoid boundaries of high and low art, and the youthful Boucher Hayes is ready to take a smartass approach to all genres. With better music it would seriously attract young adult listeners.

The show's hip cool approach runs the risk of crossing over into ignorance. Tuesday's discussion of the "top cringe factor moments" of the Oscars saw Boucher Hayes and Suzanne Campbell going on about Muhammad Ali's appearance at the ceremony.

According to Campbell, Ali is mentally unwell, and was confused and unaware of his surroundings. Such observations make for glib pathos and a suitable slag at the cynicism of such events; unfortunately, according to those why have met Ali, it's also a gross misreading of the ramifications of his terrible physical debility. I know it's hard for you young post modernists, but give the man just a little bit of respect.