THE most enchanting feature of the present dispute over television deflectors is the genuine sense of moral indignation which fills the hearts of those who wish to capture from the airwaves that which is not theirs, for which they have not paid and for which they do not wish to appear to want to pay, which does not reflect their native culture, their history or their national interests and which emanates from a country and a power which they are adamant, through every utterance of their political representatives, that they want nothing to, do with.
Meanwhile, the entire political establishment of this free separate and sovereign state is preoccupied with ways of securing access to foreign television.
Governments could come into existence on account of this very issue. Any rural TD who said that it was wrong and absurd for the national politics of an independent state to be, obsessed with the larceny of vagrant airwaves from foreigners for domestic consumption, and he/she was entirely opposed to any political move to facilitate, the capture of such airwaves, would have as much chance of being elected as a fox in a hen run.
Single Issue
Here we are, in the middle of the largest economic boom in Europe since the great German miracle of the 1950s, and the single issue which could change the political destiny of the State is not taxation, it is not the deplorable infrastructure within the State, it is not unemployment, it is not poverty, it is not about distribution of wealth; it is about access to foreign television.
What's more - if any party announced that it would axe Telifis na Gaeilge in order to ensure by some compensatory technological miracle that the Irish people could there by watch all British television channels throughout the length of the breadth of the free 26 counties, I do not doubt it would sweep to power, very possibly without any need for coalition partners.
Fascinating, absolutely fascinating.
It was not, we may be sure, quite what the men of 1916 went out to die for; after all, democracies are seldom quite, what martyrs or revolutionaries hope they'll be. But does not the furore over access to other people's television and other people's culture, such as it is tell us a great deal about what the Irish people of 1997 actually want?
That they do not want Telifis de Lorean, we knew already; but of course nobody in Dail Eireann had the guts to declare that obvious truth.
Moral Courage
Equally, nobody in Dail Eireann has the moral courage - or the inclination towards political suicide - to declare that people in Ireland have absolutely no right to British television, and it is simply preposterous that the matter should even form part of a campaign for government. Yet, it seems, the further we grow away from the British in terms of economic performance and cultural self confidence, the closer we want to be to them; and them to us.
British television, which once reached for Vaughan Williams's folksong suites to convey the English rural idyll will, with perfect unselfconsciousness, now use the uilleann pipes and the bodhran.
Traditional folk dance is now Irish dance. Nowhere has Riverdance been more rapturously received, with spin offs galore yielding uncountable fortunes for those involved. I expect Riverdance, The Scone, to make its appearance in English bakeries any day now. Country innocence is Ballykissangel, the rural clergyman an Irish Catholic priest.
In exchange, we get more than the British television images of ourselves. The supermarket chain founded by Pat Quinn is now owned by Tesco. One wanders down Graft on Street, and one could be in Nottingham High Street. The Jervis Centre is in every detail four corners of a foreign field which is forever England Boots, Debenham's, Next, Argos and the same could be said about the new shopping centre at Quarryvale.
Is this uniquely Irish? In our expectation of watching perfect pictures of British television in West Cork, yes, that is uniquely, Irish, with all the concomitant political and moral expectations that this is somehow or other our birthright to which we are being denied by a cruel and, heartless Government. But that is merely a local dimension to a common European experience.
Electronic Pools
In Britain, court actions have been taken to prevent pubs, there from showing live Norwegian television pictures of English soccer matches. Throughout the Low Countries, people watch terrestrial television from Britain and from all their neighbours. We live in a series of electronic pools which overlap and are drunk at (though I am unaware of any foreigner avidly sipping at RTE television's pool for anything).
As it is with television pictures, so is it with supermarket, produce. When I was in Stockholm with some Irish visitors before Christmas, we all bought classically "Scandinavian" items to take home - only to find, without exception, that all such items were available, at roughly the same price, in Dublin. Supermarkets and department stores throughout Europe are rapidly becoming identical.
And above the overlapping commercial and media pools of Europe hovers the vast commercial and media world of the satellite. The only man who seems truly to have understood the vast implications of the satellite in the commercial and economic development of the human race is Rupert Murdoch. You do not have to like his vision; you do have to accept that, deplorably or otherwise, it was correct.
Within a very short time, the arguments over deflectors and microwave distribution will be over. People in cities will receive all their pictures from cable, and in rural areas, tiny saucers will lawfully pick the full range of television channels, including the present "terrestrial" ones, from satellites with every second being be paid for.
And historians will then wonder could the Irish election campaign of 1997 really have been about getting free reception of British television?