IF we really value our Constitution's designation of Irish as the first national language, we should wholeheartedly welcome the first broadcast from Teilifis na Gaeilge today. This long delayed newcomer to our airwaves will, hopefully, be seen as a watershed in our long - but less than wholehearted - struggle to make Irish a central part of what of we are.
Our celebrations should be tempered by the reflection that we have been curiously tardy in giving Irish is minimal televisual recognition. Other groups with minority languages, like the Basques and the Catalans, managed to launch rather more ambitious TV stations almost as soon as they had won the legal right to do so. Ireland, with full national sovereignty, has procrastinated for decades.
Professor Joseph Lee has said that the station alone will not save the language, but that without the station the language will die. This puts a heavy burden on Mr Cathal Goan and his colleagues, but the initial auguries are good.
It is a bold venture; the station's management has juggled limited resources to provide a mix of programming which it hopes will appeal to a broad cross section of the audience from the outset, prerecorded programmes will have subtitles in English available on teletext - an indication of TnaG's determination to reach out to the general public and avoid the linguistic ghetto its detractors have marked out for it.
The Government decision to allocate substantial funding to the project in February last year attracted much critical comment in some quarters at the time. The Minister responsible, Mr Michael D Higgins, has been accused of diverting scarce re sources from other cultural sectors to a pet project in his own backyard. The provision of £16 million in capital costs and an annual subvention of £10 million was described as a waste of money on a white elephant that would attract few viewers.
Time will tell if TnaG succeeds, but it is worth noting in that context that Leargas, an Irish language current affairs programme broadcast on RTE 1, attracted an audience in excess of 300,000 last week.
TnaG is a publisher broadcaster, which means it does not make its own programmes but relies instead on the independent production sector. A good proportion of the estimated 250 jobs created as a result are based in the Connemara Gaeltacht, which is not surprising when one considers TnaG's Gaeltacht base. The rest of the jobs are, however, spread around the country. Some independent producers have pointed out that the TnaG offers a first market for world class programming, in the field of music for example, which can then be sold on internationally to the benefit of the station, the producer, and the Irish economy generally.
The cultural argument for TnaG is simply enough put without a television of its own, the Irish language is unlikely to survive in a world increasingly dominated by the media especially television. The station will, not save the language on its own, but it comes on air at a time of renewed interest which may hold the promise of a brighter future for Irish and for TnaG than seemed possible a decade ago.