A face to watch out for on telly is Tammy Ni Laoire, a young Cork woman, who can be seen on our screens each evening. She's usually covering one of the day's breaking news stories for Nuacht TG4. Hers is a hectic schedule but in her job as a broadcast journalist "you get to do everything," she says.
"We cover elections, political stuff, job losses, job announcements, murders, any local issues that are bothering people, such as a dump that they don't want. It's so varied - you just do everything, which is good. It would be nice to do the same type of story, but the variety makes it more interesting."
The station prides itself, in particular, on its coverage of local stories. As she says: "Bimid ag diriu ar scealta aitiula." a siad san de dhith on lucht feachana". "It's great for the adrenalin when something real, something human is happening on the day," she explains. "It's quite easy to stay focused and not to personalise it. You don't think about the person involved, you are so busy trying to establish the facts - but days later the story comes back."
A story she reported in March involving the death of a mother and her two children made an impact, stopping her in her tracks, "perhaps because I have a child myself", she muses. The tragedy saw the woman drive off a pier near Kinvarra, Co Galway. Ni Laoire also covered the siege at Abbeylara, co Longford, when John Carthy was shot dead. The press were kept well back from the house, she recalls. "We weren't allowed up to the house. You couldn't see what was going on. When we heard he had been shot dead, it was unreal. That's one of the stories that had a big impact on me."
On the other hand, some stories are "bizarre". She travelled to Omey Island off the coast of Connemara some weeks ago to report on the upcoming auction of a mobile home on concrete blocks, with no running water or electricity. Its guide price was £80,000. When she says the job "is very varied" it's bit of an understatement. One of the highlights of her time at the station was a trip to Moscow two years ago to cover the St Patrick's Day parade. One story featured a young Russian girl "who would put us all to shame, she spoke such beautiful Irish".
As to herself, Ni Laoire says "I wouldn't be in this job if I didn't have Irish . . . There are so many opportunities now." She , encourages any young person who is interested in a career involving Irish to go for it. Tammy Ni Laoire grew up in Douglas in Cork city. Her parents hadn't a word of Irish and "they felt the loss of it," she explains. As a result she was sent to An Mhodh Scoil, one of the city's all-Irish primary schools, and then to Colaiste Ide, a full-time girls' boarding school near Dingle, Co Kerry, for second-level. Following her Leaving Cert in 1991, she did a degree in French and Irish at NUI Galway.
As a member of the university's Cumann Dramaiochta, which she joined in freshers' week, she was often involved in making pilot programmes for Udaras na Gaeltachta and she became familiar with TV studios and cameras. "It was great fun and a great way of building up confidence."
Her working day usually starts at 9.30 a.m. when she drives to the station about 20 miles outside Galway city. But 7.30 a.m. is the real start, she explains. Once the radio is turned on she's listening to Morning Ireland. Then she listens to all the local programmes from stations in the Galway area to get a sense of what's happening.
When she arrives at Baile na hAbhann "I meet my programme editor of the day and I head off with a camera crew. I make my calls on the go. We have such a wide area to cover. Getting from A to B you need to work on the way. I have the interview set up when I arrive at the location." She covers an area radiating from Galway stretching south to Limerick, north to Sligo and east to Longford. Her day usually finishes around 7p.m.
She applied for a job in Teilifis na Gaeilge after she finished the arddiploma i gcumarsaid fheidhmeannach (the higher diploma in applied communications) at NUI Galway, which was "was a very, very wide course. We did television, shooting film, editing to producing to presenting. It gave us an insight into the whole production." The emphasis was on the hands-on physical, editing and presenting aspect of the job. There were 15 in the group.
She's been with TG4 as an iriseoir fise since it went on air on Oiche Shamhna in 1991.
"We are lucky, we can actually edit ourselves. We work with the cameraman or you do the whole thing yourself. You edit, script, completely control your own package. It's a multi-skilled job in that respect. You have to be a journalist, an editor, a producer and a presenter. "
