Nama? That's so last summer

RADIO REVIEW:AFTER YEARS when we encouraged wealthy foreigners to visit the country, our latest batch of deep-pocketed tourists met a cooler reception after touching down last week.

But when Sean Moncrieff bemoaned the vultures crowding around Ireland, on Tuesday's Moncrieff(Newstalk, weekdays), he was not talking about the teams from the EU and the IMF; he was referring to the foreign camera crews he saw on Grafton Street on his walk to work. "Hopefully they'll spend a few bob while they're here," he said, by way of slim consolation.

In a week when the inevitability of an international bailout was endlessly picked over on radio, Moncrieff’s aside was typical of the way he has treated this. In the main he has stuck to his usual menu of offbeat trivia and arcane learning. His topics this week ranged from the unexpectedly interesting – an item on weeds with the author Richard Mabey – to the pleasurably frothy, such as an interview with the editor of a confectionery magazine about the joys of chocolate. Such an approach is an object lesson in how freewheeling radio can be produced on a small budget.

But Moncrieff is not disconnected from the bigger picture. When the opportunity arises he engages with larger issues, albeit in a skewed manner. Interviewing the businesswoman Fiona Hunt, whose namatastic.com offers items such as sloganeering shopping bags and a deliberately faulty calculator, Moncrieff wondered whether the website was not out of date. “We haven’t heard about Nama in ages,” he said before suggesting a bailout-themed range instead. As with his observation about foreign media, it was a small but stinging reminder of how Ireland’s economic catastrophe has evolved over the past two years.

No such subtlety was evident on Liveline(RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays), where the looming international rescue dominated Joe Duffy's show. But given that nobody yet knew what was going to happen, the discussions lacked focus, lapsing into reliable tales of woe and expressions of outrage. If there was a novel angle, it was the contributions from Irish expatriates on Monday's show. But their views were predictable.

One caller from England, Tom, bemoaned the fact that he, as a UK taxpayer, would probably have to pay for the Celtic tiger “party”, in between calling for Nelson’s Pillar to be re-erected. Another man, Joe, called from Middlesex to say that Ireland could no longer take any more immigrants and that scrounging foreigners should be sent away. Duffy pointed out the irony of an Irish emigrant expounding such views but quickly moved the discussion on.

Not all visitors are greeted so suspiciously. On Thursday Morning Ireland(RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays) carried an upbeat item on Globe Forum, an international marketplace conference in Dublin. As Colman O'Sullivan reported, the event hoped to link Irish entrepreneurs with international investors while promoting Dublin as a centre of innovation.

Globe Forum’s CEO, Johan Gorecki, sounded a rare – if fanciful – note of optimism when he enthused about Ireland being full of potential for innovative businesses, with research facilities a particular asset.

But, for some, even these slivers of light herald a false dawn. Declan Jordan, who teaches economics at University College Cork, appeared on The Right Hook(Newstalk, weekdays) to decry the Government's strategy to promote Ireland as a smart economy.

The substantial investment in third-level research would not deliver growth, Jordan said. Innovation was an economic rather than a scientific concept and there was no guarantee that the millions spent on “techno-fetishism” in university labs would result in jobs or wealth.

Such pessimism was in tune with George Hook, who bemoaned the “economic illiterates” in government. Moncrieff aside, the atmosphere on the airwaves was so glum you felt sorry for outsiders listening, even those arriving with harsh economic prescriptions. Always a mythical beast, Ireland of the welcomes is another casualty of our era.

Radio moment of the week

It generally plays second fiddle to Morning Ireland, but, with a febrile studio atmosphere, last Wednesday’s Breakfast (Newstalk, weekdays) delivered the most memorable radio moment of the week. In the course of a panel discussion the Fianna Fáil TD Frank Fahey blithely stated that the country did not need a bailout, that the sovereign debt was in a good situation and that the Government would put the banking problem right. Such assertions sounded close to delusional, but, even so, the response of the Fine Gael TD Brian Hayes came as a jolt. “It’s very hard to listen to Frank right now,” Hayes said, “because it’s a pile of sh*t, Frank, and you don’t believe it.” As an example of political rhetoric it was hardly Edmund Burke. But Hayes’s remark echoed the public mood more than Fahey’s blandishments.