Of course the Irish language is such a waste of taxpayer’s money. After all British culture is so much more civilised – they tamed our savage ancestors.

IInstead of having Gaelscoileanna, we should teach our children Mandarin. That will be so much more useful to them in the future. Oh and – it doesn’t matter that we were wrong about Spanish being the new language of trade – the Chinese know how to do business better than anyone else. That will be the language to get you the jobs.

Instead of promoting our savage Irish history, we should focus our attention on finding the ruins of a Roman town. Even if we confirm that they never came to Ireland, we’ll fabricate one. At least the whole world will believe that the Irish knew how to wash themselves during the first century AD!

Instead of having “Amhrán na bhFiann” as our national anthem, we will write a new song thanking Queen Elizabeth and James I for coming to our aid, and building a civilised society in Ireland. We will also denounce the “heroes” of 1916 as traitors, stabbing the British in the back when they were trying to liberate Europe from the evil Germans. It doesn’t matter that the Germans weren’t actually evil – we don’t need to know the politics of it!

We will create a future where our children will be able to go out into the world, and tell everyone that Ireland is a civilised society at last . They won’t be tainted by all that “póg mo thón” nonsense.

How wrong you are some of my favourite progammes are on TG 4 including Gossip Girl, Bonanza, France 24, One Tree Hill, Magners League, The Hills, The Doors(film) , The Cheltenham Festival and other such cultural vignettes.
As for Ros Na Run there are claims that it has 50,000 viewers, if this is the high end this makes commercially and culturally not viable and certainly a niche interest.

Including all of the English language popular programmes TG|$ gets 1.1 % audience share whereas TV3 gets nearly 11% or 10 times bigger.

You are right glyn. Why does such a small group get so much. Project “Gaelic time travel” has failed for decades. It only serves the vanity of narrow minded elitists. Worse still it’s a package deal that has to include the notion that there is only one type of Irishman. Gaelic, catholic, conservative, anti diversity, gaa supporting, parochial, rural and deluded about it’s history.

What are the viewing figures for ‘road to ruin’ anyway ?

RTE and TG4 are two completely separate companies…