REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE ON THE OCCASION OF THE SECOND ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE IBI
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE ON THE OCCASION OF THE SECOND ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE INDEPENDENT BROADCASTERS OF IRELAND (IBI)
Dia dhibh a chairde. Ta an-áthas orm bheith i bhur measc anseo ar an ócáid spesíalta seo. Míle bhuíochais dibh as an gcuireadh agus an fáilte a thug sibh dom.
I would like to thank Willie O’Reilly for his kind invitation to me to be with you at the second annual conference of the Independent Broadcasters of Ireland. I am particularly pleased to be here today as this year celebrates 21 years of independent broadcasting in Ireland, a birthday once seen as the point at which adulthood arrived.
These have been 21 years of growth from a modest infancy to these days of considerable achievement. As pioneers of independent broadcasting in both radio and television, you broadened their reach and their constituencies so that, in tandem with our fine public sector broadcasters, you have provided an ever-widening range of customised choices to young and old, rich and poor, urban and rural, lonely or lively, to communities and individuals up and down the length and breadth of Ireland. You have created new platforms for people divided by geography and circumstances but united in their common interests. You have generated new communities, new local and national conversations and you have opened the door to a massive range of fresh talent. Your success can be measured in the millions of listeners and viewers but your impact can never be truly measured for it is impossible to capture all the pleasure, all the provocation, all the education, all the entertainment which have filled out people’s everyday lives, varied their life’s texture and strengthened their sense of belonging.
You and those who have gone before you should be proud of that unseen and often unremarked impact that you have, the fun and colour that you bring to bear on life, the fears you address and illuminate, the discussions you stimulate and facilitate, the respect you show for otherwise unsung but heroic local achievement, the loneliness you dispel, the silences you break, the unhealthy attitudes you probe, challenge and help change, the welcome and heartening opportunity you create to keep in touch though far from home. There is a realm of subtlety about so many of these things that makes them elusive when it comes to piling them up and counting them, but their individual and collective impact is real and it is invaluable.
Yours is a competitive world where the struggle to keep your audience and cultivate their loyalty is relentless. Just as relentless is the struggle for financial survival, particularly in these times when advertising revenues have been hit so hard by the drop in consumer spending and the contraction of the economy. Yet twenty-one years ago there was not hint or rumour of the then undiscovered species, the Celtic Tiger. I remember twenty-one years ago. Unemployment stood at 20%. Interest rates stood at 17%. Houses were ridiculously cheap but no-one could buy them because no-one could get the cash to buy them. So you started in less than auspicious circumstances, which is good news, for clearly the pioneers in this industry were not content to wait until every omen was benign. They are not benign as you face the start of the next twenty-one years but you have a spectrum of experience and success behind you and a hunger for tomorrow’s opportunities which is as fresh today as when you first set out to create this sector from virtually nothing. New technologies offer huge potential for greater creativity and greater access which I have no doubt you will imaginatively and productively explore here today.
You have made yourselves an intimate part of the warp and weft of Irish life, locally, regionally, nationally. Martin used to tell me that in his dental surgery in Crossmaglen no-one dared speak while the local station broadcast the death notices. It had rapidly become a kind of sacred space. You keep us connected to the world around us and the world far beyond us and our lives would be a lot dimmer these past twenty-one years without the light you shone on the ordinary and the extraordinary things that keep the great wheel of life turning.
We are living through an anxious time that has become an angry time. Our people who have been rightly so proud of the success they have achieved in recent years feel let down by the actions of a small number who have damaged Ireland’s name and standing abroad. Yet in this moment we must resolutely refuse to allow ourselves to be defined solely by the actions of those few. That is not who we are or what we are and it is essential that we both reclaim our entitlement to our good name and restart the stalled prosperity process. Your role in these times is crucial as we try to come to terms with new realities and the sacrifices it is demanding of our people.
Broadcasters, both independent and public, national and local, are uniquely placed to assist in fostering and nurturing a sense of public solidarity in the present and hope for the future. You can help in creating the conditions for a shared and balanced debate and in encouraging the resilience, adaptability and innovation which will bring us safely to “that farther shore” where the wheels of commerce and industry will spin more confidently once again. When you started we were in the throes of a recession and the idea of peace in Northern Ireland was as risible as the idea that we would become a high-achieving economy. The peace process often stalled but is now bedding down very successfully. The prosperity process has now stalled but life teaches us that nothing stays the same forever and fortune favours the brave. Brave men and women started something new twenty-one years ago. Now they accompany an army of viewers and listeners through these early and unpredictable days that are our present and our future.
It has already been twenty-one exciting and successful years, the ups and downs of which no-one could have fully forecast on day one. But you did plan for effort and you hoped for success. Both have given you much to take righteous pride in and so, as you gather for your second annual conference - already light years away from your first, in terms of the ambient context - I wish you well as you put on the table all your distilled wisdom, instinct, insight and ambition and from the generous sharing of them with one another, construct the next steps of this now grown-up industry. Let us all hope and pray that the best is yet to come.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go leir.