SPEECH BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE INAUGURAL RADHARC AWARD CEREMONY, ALEXANDER HOTEL
SPEECH BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE INAUGURAL RADHARC AWARD CEREMONY, ALEXANDER HOTEL, FRIDAY, 11 JANUARY, 2002
Tá gliondar orm bheith anseo libh inniu ag an ócáid seo agus ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a chur in iúl díbh as an chaoin-chuireadh.
I think all of us gathered here know how very special is this gathering at which we inaugurate the Fr. Joe Dunn Radharc award. I feel privileged to be here and I am grateful to Fr. Dermod McCarthy, Editor of Religious Programmes in RTÉ and Fr. Martin Clarke, Chairman, Irish Churches’ Council for Television and Radio Affairs, for their kind invitation which allows me to join you in remembering a great broadcaster, in honouring a groundbreaking series of Radharc films over four decades and in celebrating and rewarding the very best of today’s programme makers who are following Radharc’s lead.
With the late Joe Dunn’s name attached to this award we are entitled already to describe it as prestigious. With his name comes a claim to excellence, to authenticity, to rigorous honesty, to the exploration of themes others wished to ignore, to the telling of stories that needed to be told boldly and told well.
The late Fr. Joe Dunn was well-known along with Fr. Des Forristal as co-founders of the very radical, innovative Radharc series. It is sad that illness prevents Fr. Des from sharing this day with us and enjoying the vindication that this award secures for Radharc as it encourages new initiatives in the genre of sociological programming, so expertly represented by the Radharc portfolio of television broadcasts.
The pervasiveness of television in contemporary life and the speed with which it has become a fixture in virtually every living room, a centre of gravity around which people gather daily, these possibilities were only imperfectly understood and intuited over forty years ago when the then Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. John Charles McQuaid, asked Fr. Forristal and Fr. Dunn to travel to New York to learn about television and broadcasting skills so that they would be well positioned to offer advice to the newly proposed public service broadcasters.
On his return to Ireland, Fr. Joe and his colleagues made some experimental films on religious topics. The name Radharc hit the screens and such was the response that the Controller of Programmes at RTÉ asked Fr. Dunn and his colleagues to go and make more. That first Radharc film was broadcast on RTÉ television twelve days after the new station began its transmissions on the 31st December, 1961 and today’s event marks that broadcast’s 40th Anniversary. It was in fact the first independent production broadcast by RTÉ.
Radharc, meaning view or vision, was aptly named. From the beginning, the innovation and imagination which infused the Radharc presentations brought us to people and places, to issues and to values, to questions of faith and beliefs, in a way that a modernising Ireland was ready for. In the Radharc team we had great teachers. Many of us recall with great fondness the “roving reporter” - a part played by Fr. Peter Lemass so well and which was both highly educational and entertaining.
Through the eyes of Radharc we were brought face to face with the remarkable work done in some of the most inhospitable conditions by Irish missionaries in trouble-spots and famine-stricken areas throughout the world. Documentaries were made in over sixty countries including Kenya, Thailand, Burma, Vietnam, Biafra, El Salvador, Chile, Poland, The Philippines, Nicaragua and Haiti, to name but a few. It is a nice touch that the tables in this room have been named after the twelve countries where some of the most memorable Radharc documentaries were made – my table is Kenya, a country I visited only a few short months ago and where I had the chance to see Irish men and women of tremendous talent, volunteering their lives in the service of the world’s poor, living simple lives, beyond ego, lives detached from the culture of acquisition, faithful to the ethic of giving.
Radharc had a way of permeating the spiritual membrane of dealing comfortably, credibly and sensitively with issues others dealt awkwardly with or cynically. One of Radharc’s most consistent successes was its knack of illustrating the deep faith of suffering peoples throughout the world, while at the same time highlighting the social and moral dilemmas they faced.
It is good to see that those stories told so well by Radharc are not just languishing in an archive but have been re-broadcast very successfully in recent times generating huge interest yet again. Now some of them have the quality of a retrospective look at a disappearing Ireland. Many of you like me will remember the Radharc programme “Honesty at the Fair” which was set in Co. Limerick of the 1960’s when farmers were asked if they told a lie when describing a ‘beast’ for sale. One man obviously didn’t want to tell a barefaced lie to a priest but with a touch of the Jesuit about him he replied “yera I’d have to tell the truth to a neighbour but a stranger would have to look after themselves.”
The inauguration of this Radharc Award is a crucial encouragement of the broadcasting values and interests which drove those Radharc pioneers. It will go to a television programme of outstanding quality which addresses national or international topics of social justice, morality or faith.
I commend and congratulate everyone associated with making this award a reality: George Waters, former Director-General of RTÉ, and his wife, Mary; current Director-General of RTÉ, Bob Collins, John Horgan of DCU Media Department, Louis Mac Redmond, writer and broadcaster, Fr. Tom Stack, parish priest of Milltown, Mr. Peter Dunn a brother of Fr. Joe and Fr. Dermod McCarthy, Editor of Religious Programmes in RTÉ.
I pay a warm and grateful tribute to Sir Jeremy Isaacs, Chairman of the Adjudicators and his panel of judges who undertook the challenging task of judging the entries.
The Award itself is a beautiful bronze casting, by Niall O’Neill, of the Radharc logo, culled from the representation of the Twelve Apostles on the ancient High Cross at Moone, Co. Kildare. It is a lovely and very apt tribute to the memory of the late Fr. Joe Dunn. Someone is going to be very proud indeed to have it on his or her mantelpiece.
The Irish public owes a lot to Radharc and like so many debts of gratitude we are often very slow to pay up. So on my own behalf and on behalf of the people of this country to whom Radharc gave so many gifts of wisdom and insight, I say a big thank you. To those involved in the Radharc Trust I wish God speed as you take on the stewardship of a film-making value system that never lost sight of its source, its inspiration and its destiny.
Go raibh maith agaibh go léir.