Raidió na Gaeltachta

RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta is owned and operated RTÉ the Irish Public Service Broadcaster which is ultimately controlled by the RTÉ Board, chaired by Siún Ní Raghallaigh. Day to day operations and management of RTÉ is the responsibility of the RTÉ Executive Board, which reports to the RTÉ Board. The RTÉ Executive is a committee of senior management in RTÉ led by the Director General, and includes Directors of television, radio, news and current affairs, Heads of channels and content as well as heads of corporate divisions such as marketing, finance, legal and strategy. Following the RTÉ payments controversy, which emerged in summer 2023, new Director General Kevin Bakhurst disbanded the RTÉ Executive and replaced it with an Interim Leadership Team.

RTÉ Radio overall reaches 28.5% of Irish radio listeners, Raidió na Gaeltachta reaches 0.4% of all radio listeners.

Raidió na Gaeltachta began broadcasting in 1972 with the aim to provide a comprehensive Irish language radio service to serve residents of the Gaeltacht areas of Ireland and Irish speakers throughout the country. The main Gaeltacht areas in Ireland are mainly located along the West coast in areas of Donegal, Mayo, Galway, Kerry and Cork. There are also Gaeltacht areas in Meath on the East Coast and Waterford on the South Coast. These are areas where the primary spoken language in the community is Irish. To ensure their survival, the government has enacted special legislation, structures and funding for these areas to ensure the continued viability of these regions.

A radio service for the Gaeltacht and Irish speakers was one of the demands that emerged from a civil rights movement in the late 1960s led by Gluaiseacht ar Son Cearta Sibhíalta na Gaeltachta (Movement on Behalf of Civil Rights for the Irish-Speaking Areas). This group felt that RTÉ was sidelining Irish language programming in favour of English due to pressure to attract high viewership and listenership for its TV and radio programming. As such, it was reneging on its public service remit to be inclusive and representative of all Irish citizens. Political pressure mounted on RTÉ to address this, particularly after the establishment of a pirate Irish language radio station Saor-Raidió Chonamara. In the early 1970s it agreed to establish a separate Irish language station.

The station headquarters is located in a purpose-built studio in Galway with satellite studios throughout the Gaeltacht regions contributing to its programming. Initially the station was only broadcast in the afternoon and for a time in the 1980s shared a radio frequency with RTÉs newly launched Radio 3, a classical music station, later renamed to Lyric FM.

Today, Raidió na Gaeltachta provides a schedule of programming that includes news and current affairs, music (particularly traditional Irish music), culture and the arts, and sport. Its audience has grown beyond the boundaries of designated Gaeltacht areas in Ireland, to Irish speakers and Irish learners throughout Ireland and, via RTÉ Radio’s online player and app, to a global audience of Irish speakers.

Raidió na Gaeltachta is funded mainly by the licence fee as it has limited capacity to generate commercial income. The station doesn’t sell spot advertising like its RTÉ English language counterparts and the main source of commercial income is through sponsorship.