T.N.G. is quite simply Television for 10,000 people. Roughly that number can speak fluent Irish and having watched a little of T.N.G. you will need quite a considerable amount of Irish to make it worth watching (assuming that the programmes improve a lot). Being a product of the magnificent Irish Leaving certificate my Irish is considerably sub-standard.

But lets look at the merits of T.N.G. from a television industry perspective. TV3 which will serve 3.5 million people instead of just 10,000 can't get off the ground because there is no money to get it going. Surely £16 milli on would have been better spent on TV3 or even the new 

So why was that amount of money flushed down the T.N.G toilet. Quite simply Michael D. Higgins liked the idea. You see this year is an election year and wee Michael has to look after his seat. Over his 5 years in office he h as pumped vast amounts of money into the area of Arts Culture and The Gaelteach. This while the unemployed suffered on the dole, vitally needed prison spaces were scrapped and crime became rampant because the Guards were under funded and under staffed. Now don't get me wrong. I'm all for boosting Arts and Culture but personally I think that there are far too many social problems in this county to spend millions on an election ploy. Lets look at a long term unemployed man living on the dole, or a mothe r watching her children slowly kill themselves because the drug rehab clinics just don't have the funding to shorten the waiting lists, or what about the millions of starving refugees who face certain death in Zaire as we speak. I'm sure that they will f ind great comfort in the fact that at long last a television station has been set up to cater for one of the most useless languages in the world.