I have to declare an interest in this week's subject. In fact, I would go so far as to say a very clear bias. Not only do I co-present a current affairs programme with Alan Dukes once a month on Teilifis na Gaeilge, I was also the minister who made the first decision in favour of the setting up of an Irish-language TV station in 1992.
What I believed then (and still do) was crystallised in an editorial in this newspaper in 1996: "Without a TV station of its own the Irish language is unlikely to survive in a world increasingly dominated by the media - particularly television."
The problem I have is that TnaG is suffering from a bad dose of assumptions. It has developed a bunch of phrases starting with the words "Sure everyone knows that . . . " that get trotted out every time the station is mentioned. Some examples. Sure everyone knows that TnaG costs a fortune to run. Sure everyone knows that only 10 per cent of the population speak Irish at all. Sure everyone knows that no one watches the station anyway.
And, of course, these assumptions are wrong.
Dealing with the cost of running the station first. TnaG costs about £16 million a year. That sounds like a very large amount of money until you compare it with S4C, Britain's Welsh-language station. It costs £80 million and produces about the same amount of output, timewise.
When TnaG started broadcasting it was expected to produce an Irish-language service for no more than two hours a day. It currently provides 4 1/2 hours of programming in Irish daily. On top of this it provides other programmes including live coverage of Dail Question Time, a European news service and football coverage.
TnaG directly employs 30 to 40 people along with many more in the independent television production sector. New young Irish talent has been nurtured and trained by TnaG in everything from production techniques to scriptwriting to broadcast journalism. (The success of this training will be seen in the numbers of TnaG staff recruited by TV3.)
TnaG is husbanding its resources well and making use of the latest television production equipment available.
The claim that only 10 per cent of the population speak Irish is just plain wrong. According to the 1996 census 41 per cent of the population now claims the ability to speak Irish.
Even if the figure was accurate it cannot be used as an argument against the station. TnaG is not aimed at fluent Irish-speakers. Its job is to help increase the number of people using the language. To keep this most precious jewel and cornerstone of our culture and history in place.
All of its programmes are subtitled where possible, so that those with little or no Irish get used to the sound of the language, its phrasing and the vocabulary. The station's often-criticised use of English-language programmes is not a disadvantage at all. Rather it is a clever exploitation of the channel-hopping so prevalent in television viewing. It gets people into the habit of checking out what's on that TnaG.
Sometimes they'll find something in Irish that they actually find interesting, rather than the Spanish football match they were hunting for. And, while they may be working mainly with the subtitles, they will be exposed to a living language.
The final argument used against TnaG is that not many people are tuning in. In January 1998 TnaG's daily audience reach was averaging 340,000 viewers. It has doubled its viewership in its first full year of operation, while competing with the established terrestrial channels and the satellite offerings of Sky. During its first year of operation Channel 4 had a similar percentage of the viewing public even though it broadcast in English.
Until now TnaG has been extremely successful while operating on a shoestring budget and providing a showcase for Irish talent and our native tongue.
What the station needs now is the continued support of the Government. And some co-operation from the cable and MMDS operators and the newspapers.
Let me explain. In the near future we will have dozens of television channels to choose from courtesy of digital broadcasting. Already TnaG tends to get relegated to channels 13, 14 and even 15, somewhere near Eurosport and usually past Sky News. The early channels, Nos 1 to 6, usually have the two RTE stations, BBC 1 and 2, UTV and Channel 4 tuned in on them.
That just happens to be the way they get programmed in by the cable and MMDS companies when they are connecting new customers. With digital TV these companies will have to reprogramme their customers' television sets. If they could be persuaded to place RTE 1, Network 2, TV3 and TnaG on the first four buttons on the remote control (in other words give priority of service to Irish channels), this would help enormously with the number of times channel-hoppers get to see the station.
If the newspapers could be persuaded to lay out the TV pages in the same order it would help viewers find the programmes they're looking for, while keeping the TnaG name prominent. No significant cost involved in either option, and if the customer doesn't like the order they can always get a bright 10-year-old to change it.
One final point. The cost-benefit analysis for TnaG works out in its favour because of a combination of smart budgeting and talented professionals working at what they enjoy. Even if the sums were not so good - if, for example, it was anything approaching as expensive as S4C - I would still support the station. I would support it because it is really designed for the next generation of Irish-speakers.
Our children spend at least an hour a day studying the language in school. But school rarely brings the language to life. Children need to see Irish being used and holding its own with English. They need to see it as part of modern Ireland, not some archaeological relic inflicted upon them against their wills. Our children have learned cartloads of American slang from TV: now we have a chance that they will pick up something uniquely Irish from it. We should not miss that opportunity.