When Fianna Fail remembers its friends, it does so with an admirable thoroughness.
Thus, as the Government unveiled its eye-popping new broadcasting policy - digital television and all that - and set off a small, summery storm of gee-whiz coverage of our dazzling multimedia future, Minister Sile de Valera quietly included a little gift for local radio.
Local radio, you may recall, was widely credited with playing a decisive role in the last general election. Not, of course, through any editorial fault of its own: the IRTC would hardly have looked (or listened) kindly on the audio equivalent of a front-page "Payback Time" leader. No, local radio's influence was, it seems, in spite of its independence rather than a breach of it. Fianna Fail, its ear ever to the ground (which nowadays means with a Walkman plugged in), simply realised the power and scope of the medium as well as the style it required, and used it better than its political rivals.
It was FF (in the person of Ray Burke) that sired the local stations, and now - having used them to great effect - the FF-led Government has liberated them from the hated 3 per cent levy. The levy on independent radio was an awkward character. Rather than setting a price for the use of the public airwaves or gauging a fee based on the potential or actual audited listening figures, the IRTC levied stations based on stations' profits.
The flaws of this system have become ever more apparent to station executives as the stations have finally become more profitable.
Thus, the past couple of weeks, their jaws are aching - from smiling, of course.
How robust a radio service are they giving us in return for those now-sacrosanct profits? That's a story as varied as the map of Ireland, and one that many readers are in a better position to answer than this Dublin-based reviewer.
However, a bit of summer travel suggests that for harder-hitting, genuinely local speech radio, you're better off going south, away from the empires that ensure that Mid West Radio and North West Radio are, most of the time, the same station (especially when playing the same, dull music); ditto Shannonside and Northern Sound. Radio Kerry still sounds terrific every time I tune in, and - in sharp contrast to the northern "networking" - in Cork the "opt-outs" on County Sound ensure vigorous local programming for both west Cork and north Cork.
Speaking of local radio: after years of neglect, this column twice last month turned its attentions to the dubious FM104 Phone Show With Adrian Kennedy.
There's little danger of myself or Medb Ruane giving the crucial oxygen of publicity to a programme that's already dizzy on the stuff, but it's been a while since we mentioned the merits of one of its competitors. So listen up: Tonight With Vin- cent Browne (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Thursday) has been the soundest, solidest, more serious programme on the wireless for a couple of years now. On Monday of last week Browne delivered one of his excellent one-to-one interviews, and it yielded remarkable insight into the workings of what's been immortalised as "the peace process".
The interviewee was Dennis Bradley, an ex-Derry priest who acted as a mediator between the republican movement and British governments in the 1970s and again in the 1990s. He persisted in the role in spite of his conviction that governments, in particular, are thoroughly untrustworthy.
This was a series of fascinating footnotes to our recent history: for example, it was Bradley who - when contacts looked like breaking down - boiled down Sinn Fein's views into the famous, hotly denied "war is over" message; and a British negotiator embellished it further before passing it on to receptive politicians.
And how important was Albert Reynolds to the process? Too important, some of the British agents feared. Albert, it seemed, had John Major wrapped around his finger and no one could be sure - in spite of the opposing political pressures - how far Major would go if gently prodded by Reynolds. That's what I call the stuff of history.
