TG4, originally known as Teilifís na Gaeilge (TnaG), broadcasts on terrestrial television in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. It has an annual budget of €34.5 million. The station has an audience of an average of 650,000 people each day in the Republic, a fifty per cent increase on what it was in the 1990s. The station's anchor shows are the long-running soap opera Ros na Rún (160,000 weekly viewership), popular teen drama Aifric, nightly news programme Nuacht TG4 (viewership circa. 8,000), current affairs programme 7 Lá and dubbed documentaries Fíorscéal. Other popular programs include or have included a dating show, Eochair an ghrá, a documentary about the Irish language abroad, Thar Sáile, travel shows such as Amú Amigos (viewership 50,000), Seacht / Seven – a university drama set in Belfast (viewership 40,000), the dating game Paisean Faisean, South Park in Irish, chat show Ardán, talent show Nollaig No. 1, and children's shows Cúla 4 and Síle.
Cúla 4
Cúla 4 is a digital channel and carries TG4's strand of children's programmes. Programmes are broadcast Mondays–Sundays from 7am to 9am, then from 2:30pm to 5:30pm. At the Tourism and Sports post-Budget briefing, Minister Catherine Martin announced Cúla 4 will have its own TV channel launched by TG4. It's scheduled for 2023.
RTÉ One
Irish public broadcaster RTÉ has one channel, RTÉ One, which broadcasts Irish-language programmes such as news bulletin Nuacht RTÉ le TG4 and new programmes every year such as documentaries of various scandals that rocked Ireland Scannal and community programme Pobal. It was reported on Tuairisc.ie in 2018 that circa. 70,000 viewers watch Nuacht RTÉ every evening on RTÉ One.[1]
RTÉ News
RTÉ News is a digital 24-hour news service available featuring national and international news. It broadcasts news mostly in the English language but also Nuacht TG4 le RTÉ, the daily Irish language news bulletin on RTÉ ONE television and repeats Nuacht TG4 at 11:30 each night.
Houses of the Oireachtas Channel
Houses of the Oireachtas Channel or Oireachtas TV is a digital television channel in the Republic of Ireland which broadcasts live from both the Irish houses of parliament Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann in Dublin and also broadcasts some Oireachtas committee meetings. It covers parliamentary debates in both official national languages English and Irish although it should be known that the vast bulk of Oireachtas debates take place through English.
There are four radio stations that broadcast entirely in Irish:
National
RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta (RnaG) – a national radio station which is part of the RTÉ franchise broadcasting throughout the entire island of Ireland with an annual budget of approximately €13 million similar in size to BBC Radio Cymru
Youth
Raidió Rí-Rá – Conradh na Gaeilge-run youth-orientated chart music station, currently broadcasting on the internet and in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway on DAB. The station also broadcasts an hour long programme on weekday nights on Raidió na Gaeltachta and is the only youth radio station in a Celtic language. They hope to receive a national license to broadcast on FM.
Greater Dublin
Raidió Na Life – community and community of interest radio station broadcasting in the Greater Dublin area. The station seeks to get a national license from the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland to be able to broadcast across the Republic of Ireland on FM radio.
Greater Belfast
Raidió Fáilte – community and community of interest radio station broadcasting in the Greater Belfast area. The station seeks to get a national license from Ofcom to be able to broadcast across Northern Ireland on FM radio.
Online radio stations
Raidió Rí-Rá – Conradh na Gaeilge-run Irish language chart music internet radio station which broadcasts in some areas on DAB. Conradh na Gaeilge hope for the station to receive funding and a national license for the station to broadcast across Ireland on FM.
Stations with daily/weekly Irish-language programming
Almost all other national, regional and local stations also have at least one (usually weekly) Irish-language programme such as the following radio stations:
Outside Ireland:
3ZZZ; Melbourne Community Radio, Australia: Saturday and Sunday
A company called Digital Audio Productions specialising in all aspects of radio programming has created two very successful Top 40 Oifigiúil na hÉireann and Giotaí brands of Irish-language radio programmes.
Top 40 Oifigiúil na hÉireann (Ireland's Official Top 40) is a new phenomenon, and it has become increasingly popular to hear the Irish Top 40 hits being presented entirely in Irish on what are regarded as English-language radio stations such as:
Seachtain – weekly supplement with the Irish Independent (Wednesdays).
Newspapers with Irish-language columns
In addition to these, other newspapers which have Irish-language columns include:
The Irish Times – weekly Irish-language page entitled Tuarascáil published on Mondays and they also publish these articles and other Irish-language articles and some Irish-language news in English on their Treibh Twitter account.
Lunguashop
Com/irish
Several computer software products have the option of an Irish-language interface. Prominent examples include KDE,[3]Mozilla Firefox,[4]Mozilla Thunderbird,[4]OpenOffice.org,[5]LibreOffice
and various language packs for Microsoft products including Microsoft Office.[6]VBulletin the most popular software for hosting online chat forums has an Irish-language option. The option of using it is available on PeoplesRepublicofCork.com.
Video games
In 2012 Derry City-based independent developer Black Market Games released
Dead Hungry Diner, a fast-paced action-puzzler video game.[7] An Irish-language version of Dead Hungry Diner, in conjunction with Foras na Gaeilge, was subsequently made available for free from Black Market Games' website, with the intent of promoting learning through Irish. This is credited as being the first commercial video game to be released in Irish.[8]
Minecraft has an Irish language option in a game released in 2012 in version 1.3.1.[9]
In 2015 the video game developer John Romero released a remake of the 1980s PC platformer, Dangerous Dave, featuring Irish as one of its languages.[10] Romero currently resides and works in Galway. Another game on which Romero was a key developer – Commander Keen – was used in 2005 by a fan called Benvolio to make a mod entirely in the Irish language: Bunny Basher 2.
In July 2021 Among Us launched the official Irish language translation of the game.[11]
Mobile technology
In 2008 the mobile phone maker Samsung said that it would create a mobile phone specifically for the Irish-language market, which would include Irish-language predictive text. Later that year Samsung announced that all of its new phones launched from 2009 onwards would have "Gael Fón" – a feature allowing Irish as a language option, including predictive text, which was developed by the company – as standard.[12]
Since 2012, Adaptxt, a predictive texting app for Android, also includes Irish as an available language.
Irish language apps
TeachMe! Irish
Abair leat (Irish language social networking site app)
