Darren J. Prior
A YOUNG native Irish speaker from Portmarnock is the new face of weekday evenings on Ireland's newest television channel.
Niamh Ní Chróinín grew up in a bilingual household in Portmarnock and was speaking Irish before she was speaking English.
She attended Scoil an Duinnínigh in Swords and Portmarnock Community School before attending Trinity College to study Sociology and Irish.
While attending Trinity College Niamh got some work experience in the media and went on to be involved with several radio stations including Today FM and 98 FM and she was most recently the manager of Conradh na Gaeilge chart music internet radio station Raidió Rí-Rá.
Many people in Ireland may be aware of the existence of Irish language television for children Cúla4 as there was up until recently a previous iteration of the station broadcasting programmes for a couple of hours in the mornings and evenings.
However TG4 announced last year that they were going to relaunch Cúla4 as a full television channel, broadcasting from 6.00–20.00 every day in Irish catering for children up to the age of 12.
TG4 had a few months earlier received a funding commitment from Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media Catherine Martin in Budget 2022 to be able to make this decision and commit the resources to Cúla4.
The channel had been planned and hoped to be developed by TG4 for several years prior to them receiving the funding to be able to do so.
In April of this year Niamh Ní Chróinín was revealed to be the evening time presenter and ambassador of the channel in general.
Speaking at the launch of revamped Cúla4 in Conamara on September 4, Minister Catherine Martin said:
"The launch of a dedicated Irish language children's channel gives TG4 the opportunity to better serve younger Irish audiences. I am very pleased to see the combination of child-focused news, educational and entertainment content in the schedule. I welcome the strategy to provide the content digitally which ensures that the content can be accessed on a multiplatform basis, and ensures Cúla4 will be where children are. For non-native speakers, this brings the language out of the school environment and into their homes."
Speaking to Northside People Niamh said:
"Within TG4 this has been a dream and it has been a vision and something that a lot of people have worked very hard towards for a few years.
"Since the funding was officially confirmed last year a lot of work has gone into it and everyone here in TG4's offices have been brilliant and working really hard.
"It has been a big team effort to get it off the ground between commissioning new television shows - we're going from a few hours of kids programmes a day to 14 hours of Irish language programming for kids every single day."
Not only has Cúla4 been relaunched and revamped for Irish-speaking children but Irish-speaking children from the Gaeltacht and across the country take part in many of the programmes according to Niamh.
"It's great to meet the people who are watching the station because they are the most important people to us so it's great to have them in the studio, see what they think, get some feedback and just have them involved so they can see themselves back on screen. And there are some newly commissioned shows that have a lot of young people around the country involved.
"There are primary school classes from around the country taking part in these."
The other two main presenters working on Cúla4 are Seosamh Mac Seoin who is from Belfast and Síle Ní Chonghaile from Galway.
Cúla4 is based alongside TG4 in Baile na hAbhann in Conamara and the channel is available on Saorview, Virgin Media, Sky and Eir as well as having a strong social media presence including on YouTube.
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