Mr. Alan Esslemont:

At the point of Covid we realised that this country was at a crossroads linguistically. The choice was to continue down the slope towards a monolingual State or say, "No, things have not been done correctly in the past." There are examples in Wales and in the Basque country where the state sees the need of pulling bilingualism forward. All of the Irish language media have a key role to play as a support for the Irish language, especially in this modern world. Our question is as follows: Why, when you can see that there is a thriving bilingual community in Wales, does their media have twice the resources than that of the Irish language media in Ireland, particularly when, in Ireland, the Irish language is the first language?

Over the next three or four years we will have what we call the TG4 post-Covid vision. There is a short version and a 26-page version, which we have made available. It is key that we get up to at least the same level as S4C in Wales. I believe that when we reach that level, and we have talked about “An Cailín Ciúin”, you will see a flowering in Irish language creativity that will then have huge knock-on benefits for society and will drive the Irish language forward. If we stay as we are then we will go down a slope towards monolingualism and this is a call from TG4 to say, "No, we have to change this".