SOME of the press reports over the last few days have suggested that Radio Ireland is in trouble with the IRTC because of the management differences that became public last week - and even that the final stage of the station's licensing procedure hangs in the balance.
That Radio Ireland has shot itself in the foot, there can be little doubt. At the time of writing, Dan Collins remains chief executive but if as most observers believe, he leaves the station, it's a bloody awkward situation for the board and the IRTC, right enough.
However, I sincerely hope that in the long run this is regarded as a hiccup rather than a body blow and that the IRTC sees it in this light. And my sincerity is as nothing compared to the folks who started rehearsing up in Jervis Street last week for programmes that go on the air in less than a month.
Yes, Collins is a symbol of Radio Ireland's public service commitment. In Radio Kerry, he helped shape a station that in many ways, not least current affairs coverage, stood out from the crowd - helped by the fact that the Kingdom's airwaves aren't nearly so crowded as most other places in the State.
But given that the current ructions in Radio Ireland have nothing to do with programming, we are reliably informed, there is no reason to see the Radio Ireland schedule as anything other than the fruits of Collins's labour. Anyway, if in the fullness of time, the IRTC is going to scrap with Radio Ireland, let it be over its actual content rather than the name on the label.
There's no sign of him getting a starring role on Radio Ireland but the Bloody Sunday anniversary and surrounding controversy have made Derry's Eamonn McCann a more frequent visitor to the nation's radio studios of late and is in rare form he's been.
A far more regular chat show guest back in the days of Section 31, when he often filled the broadly republican gap at the table (while chafing at the label), McCann talked more sense in a few minutes on this week's Sunday Show (RTE Radio 1) than a gaggle of Sinn Feiners have done in the years since restrictions were lifted. (No insult is intended to the SF spokespeople, whose task, like that of all politicians on the airwaves, has had nothing to do with talking sense. Maire Geoghegan Quinn has an extraordinary transition ahead of her.)
Which is not to say McCann doesn't engage in point scoring on Sunday he took particular delight in congratulating Ruth Dudley Edwards for her unique and consistently expressed faith that the Brooke talks process was actually getting somewhere. Nor does he always give a straight, simple answer; when he evaded Andy O'Mahony's question about "violence", however, it was in the interest not of dodging his interlocutor but of challenging the hidden assumptions about the legitimacy of state violence that lay behind the query.
Dudley Edwards, meanwhile, was also having a deconstructionist go at her opponents' language. They were calling US State Department officials "Anglophile", she said, just because these sensible career diplomats didn't agree with the Irish Government about everything and weren't supporting Jean Kennedy Smith.
Nice try, but you don't have to carry a torch for the Irish American US Ambassador to recognise "Anglophile" as the technically correct term for an outlook prevalent among the upper bureaucratic caste in Washington. Like Bill Clinton, the most prestigious scholarships for which - these people could compete on graduation from their posh colleges were ones that would take them to Oxbridge, their deeply ingrained intellectual and cultural neplus ultra.
The Sunday Show chat was all fairly well mannered and put me in mind of a recent chat with some colleagues in which one lamented the passing on of Ireland's great political characters, men who could be counted on to set the air alight with a heady brew of invective and mixed metaphor.
I reckon those characters are still to be found just not on the national airwaves.
Fianna Fail backbencher Liam Fitzgerald was on Friday's News Plus (Anna Livia FM Monday to Friday) accusing the Government of being "addicted to spending". This is not in itself startling, nor was his mix of fiscal rectitude and quotes about poverty from the Conference of Religious in Ireland a uniquely opportunistic melange.
No, it was his central metaphor, earned with dogged consistency throughout a 10 minute interview, that captured this listener's imagination. "This Government has given the people of Ireland a great big lollipop," he said, or words to that effect "and it's letting everyone have a lick of it."
But will the Irish people re elect the Government on the strength of that yummy sweet? Oh now we will not. Because, Fitzgerald said more than once, "we'll get a change in the taste of the saliva at the back of our mouths."
No, Dick Spring won't fool us even having finished that increasingly distasteful lolly, the Irish people "will take the sticky stick, or the Tricky Dick, and throw it back at this Government".
