Playing it cool as Gaeilge

Cead is a do, beo. It is without doubt the most famous rhyme in Irish on the radio. Raidio na Life, the capital's only Irish-language radio station, has been grooving as Gaeilge for the past five years on 102 FM and seems set to enjoy many more successful years.

Originally founded by a handful of Dublin Irish-speakers who saw the need for a distinctively urban voice for the language, the station aimed, says manager Fionnuala Mac Aodha, "to provide an all-Irish radio station for the greater Dublin area that would be different from Raidio na Gaeltachta and that, hopefully, would attract younger people.

"It was also to attract people who weren't native Irish speakers, people who had done Irish at school but whose Irish wouldn't be up to listening to Raidio na Gaeltachta. Basically, it was proving that there was such a thing as a Dublin Gaeltacht."

The distinctiveness was found in the formula of Irish-speaking presenters introducing an eclectic range of music. The station confronted the big bogeyman of English-language records (a challenge which Raidio na Gaeltachta has continually ducked) and found that the sky didn't fall in. Its unique taste in music has won the station recognition and listeners. Recently, that bible of youthful sounds, Hot Press, has joined in, "wholeheartedly" endorsing Colm O Riagain's Monday night rock show, Carraigcheol.

There is no doubting Mac Aodha's assertion that their "music policy is very different" from Raidio na Gaeltachta's. Traditional, jazz, techno, ska and reggae, classical, r'n'b, indi, dance, drum and bass and hip-hop all vie for attention on the play-list.

The broad range of what's on offer has helped to bring about a "huge change in attitude to Irish", she says. Young people want their music. As long as the music is good, having it introduced in Irish presents no problem.

And in the never-ending battle to make the language hip, cool and fashionable, there has been no shortage of musicians willing to jam to the Life lilt. Luka Bloom, The Frames, the Mary Janes, The Plague Monkeys, Prayerboat and The Four of Us have all demoed on the station, endowing it with a certain street-cred and earning themselves a little local air time.

Although Raidio na Life broadcasts as far south as Wicklow, as far west as Athlone and as far north as Newry, the station has no listener figures for anywhere outside Dublin, where a daily audience of 13,600 in the 15-44 age group tunes in. Lack of funds means there isn't the money to count heads accurately, but Mac Aodha is satisfied the station is "reaching its target audience".

Proof of that assertion can be found among the staff. Currently, there are 105 volunteers working for Raidio na Life in all aspects of the business - presenters, researchers, technicians and producers. She is confident that those who contribute to the station find it rewarding.

"Where I get the most pleasure is when someone comes in here who has never spoken Irish except in a school context. They can understand everything I say but, literally, can't string a sentence together. Within a week, you can see the improvement. That's where we've proven what the station was set up to do," she says.

Her boast that Raidio na Life is "one of the few stations where you can come in and learn all aspects of radio" is no idle one. They have the talent to prove it. Ten people who trained with them are now working with RTE. Among the more notable are Network 2's Sharon Ni Bheolain and TnaG's Fachtna O Drisceoil.

For Mac Aodha, it is the "nature of radio" that people move on. She is delighted, however, that those who used the station as "a nursery" are appreciative of that fact and return "to give something back" whenever possible. O Drisceoil, for example, currently hosts a Saturday evening chat show.

The scale of the achievement is all the greater when the lack of resources is considered. At present, the station occupies a few cramped rooms in Merrion Square and receive a small annual grant of £25,000 from Bord na Gaeilge. The station operates a FAS scheme and other revenue is generated through advertising. Mac Aodha is the only full-time, salaried employee.

It's shoe-string stuff but the station is nothing if not imaginative and has recently acquired a 32-track studio. This, Mac Aodha hopes, will become a "huge source of income". The aim is to provide facilities for up-and-coming bands who can't afford time in more commercial ventures, and to target PR companies and advertisers who are looking for value for money.

On the talk side, the station tries to cover as much ground as possible with programmes on environmental issues, business, current affairs, literature and the arts. There's even a holiday programme. It's a full schedule - and it needs to be. The station broadcasts from 4.30 p.m. to midnight on weekdays and from noon to midnight at weekends, a grand total of 611/2 hours of freely-given commitment.

It's not entirely without problems. The wide range of abilities means that some programmes can be better than others and the standard of Irish is not always, as Mac Aodha admits, to the purists' taste.

"I would be the first person to admit that there are certain presenters who need improvement and we are run training courses at weekends in Irish. Overall, Dublin's Irish speakers have reacted very positively to us - and that's not just young people, that's all age groups," she says.

And the future? Will Raidio na Life ever go national? "It could happen," Mac Aodha believes. "We do have programmes that would appeal to people all around the country. What I'd like to see is that we'd broadcast 24 hours a day. Long-term we could survive without a grant and become self-sufficient but I wouldn't like to see us become hugely commercialised. The particular atmosphere we have is special."