Independent.ieLetters to the Editor
14 July 2023 at 02:30
RTÉ discontinued long-wave (LW) radio transmissions last April on the grounds of the cost incurred in maintaining the LW transmitter.
This cost just over €200,000 a year, mainly to cover the cost of electricity.
The main users of the LW service in the UK were the elderly Irish men and women who left Ireland in the mass emigrations of the second half of the 20th century.
Many of this group depended on LW RTÉ as an important emotional and social link with Ireland. Internet radio was not an appropriate substitute for this cohort.
These were the people who provided a vital economic lifeline for parents and siblings by virtue of their monthly remittances from the UK, and who by emigrating reduced the financial burden on the State itself.
The decision to end LW, given with a cowardly two-week notice to prevent organised debate on the issue, perfectly illustrates the dismissive contempt that the “ivory tower” RTÉ management has held for the needs of Ireland’s elderly overseas citizens to maintain contact with the land of their birth.
In comparison with the millions squandered on ‘talent’, failed musicals, entertainment, meals and flip-flops, how little it would have cost to maintain the LW service for another 10 or 15 years for the benefit of the aging Irish Diaspora.
Christopher Greenhalgh, Bearsden, Glasgow
https://www.independent.ie/opinion/letters/letters-rte-shows-contempt-for-ageing-irish-diaspora-by-ending-long-wave-service/a611588724.html