Faktoj kaj Ciferoj

...de la blogo, From the Balcony, de Máirtín Ó Muilleoir:

Some figures to crunch:

The Welsh language TV channel, S4C, gets £90m from London with around another £20m in programmes provided by BBC. Welsh speakers also have a full radio service.

In Scotland, there is £12m for tv programming with BBC providing an additional £8m of services, including Radio na Gaidhlige.

In the South of Ireland, TG4 gets around €35m with RTÉ providing an additional 365 hours per annum. Raidió na Gaeltachta broadcasts around the clock.

In the North, through the Irish Language Broadcast Fund, £3m goes into Irish language programming. BBC NI provides about 17 hours of programming a year, though it recently upped its paltry expenditure from £400k to £900k per annum. Nothing to write home about but by leveraging this money against funds from the ILBF, it can up its Gaeilge content. The BBC also provides around 260 hours of radio programming.

The way forward is for TG4 to truly become a national TV provider, admittedly letting the BBC and UTV off the hook in the North, but dramatically upping its content (and Ulster representation) to service the six counties.

With the Irish language getting more than 100 times less than Welsh, the case for a proper broadcast service in Irish for the North is unanswerable.