Mr. Tom?s Kenny:

Far greater penetration into The Irish Times, the Irish Independent, TG4 or whatever is pointless if people cannot access the book after the fact. That is part of the problem now because we are all at a loss as to knowing what is being published. There is no point in TG4 having a new show unless the distribution side of it is fixed. Sarah Kenny is absolutely right. There are definitely possibilities. Madame Lazareby Tadhg Mac Dhonnagáin won an EU prize. That was published a year ago and won an EU prize for literature for the island of Ireland. We were offered funding by that EU prize to put on an event and do marketing around it. We have never, in 82 years, been approached by anybody in Ireland to do anything like that about Irish language books, whereas we have for English language ones. It took an EU organisation to look to fund it in any way, shape or form. Nobody is looking for handouts or anything like that but there is a recognition in English language poetry, for example, that it is not necessarily viable commercially and yet there are poetry readings everywhere because they are funded, rightfully, by the Arts Council. The same is not true in an Irish language capacity, despite there being people out there who are willing, capable and able to do it.

There is a way forward for audiobooks. The best way of spreading Irish might be podcasting as much as anything else. I know we are talking about publishing and books but that is the way most people consume their media now, certainly for my age bracket and all my friends and family. There are possibilities there. The one thing there is no lack of is the actual creation itself. There is so much material there to sell and to have and there are immensely talented people doing it on the writing and the publishing side. The will is there from everybody, from Áis to Foras na Gaeilge, but as I said earlier, it is an analogue model in a digital world. Hopefully that might change over time.