BBC Northern Ireland

That apart...

I said, in BBC Northern Ireland cover events because there's a Northern Irish interest in them.

RTE cover the event because it's there, because BBC Belfast is a regional broadcaster and RTE is a national broadcaster.

So it was a kind of a no brainer as far as I was concerned.

And that's the nuance being added into it.

Absolutely.

And I work for BBC Northern Ireland.

I cover Northern Ireland matches.

He came out here with the Lions.

And a friend of mine who was a broadcaster, a commentator for BBC Northern Ireland actually went down to do a piece, a little mini documentary on Moss Keane.

Now, he was a hard man.

He had a set of buckled teeth and quite a red sort of a face.

Well, unlike, uh, Scotland and Wales, the position for Northern Ireland is slightly different in that there is some sort of a legal structure already governing when a, a referendum on unification, known as a border poll in, in the Good Friday agreement, might be triggered, although a lot of it depends on interpretation and, a- and all that, that sort of thing.

Uh, let's just have a chat now to a political reporter for BBC Northern Ireland, Brendan Hughes, and get his take on, uh, the involvement, uh, of, uh, Michelle O'Neill, the, uh, First Minister of Northern Ireland, and Mary Lou McDonald, the President of Sinn Féin, who are also at the meeting today.

Brendan, welcome to Walescast.

Hi, Felicity.

But like Jim Neely, Mike Nesbitt when he was a broadcaster, Mark Robson, they all went through.

Joel Taggart, uh, is, is a kind of a current manifestation in BBC Northern Ireland, but, but he wouldn't have been involved with Joy 'cause he's too young.

But th- that generation, my generation of sports broadcasters in Belfast, all of them were nurtured by, by Joy Williams.

So I referred Greg to Joy, and Joy said, "But y- you're a Dublin lad.

As soon as we got a little bit north of Dundalk, it just stopped recognizing anything.

Do you remember when we were kids, you'd be watching the BBC Northern Ireland weather and you'd be going, where the fuck is the rest of Ireland, you know? It was just this like...

Australia shape, only the top right of Ireland.

And it was like, I mean, you could just tell us whether it's going to be raining in Dublin.

Hot weather and pollution are Amoy's main causes and now scientists are using DNA methods to help identify exactly where that pollution comes from and how it moves across the catchment area.

BBC Northern Ireland's agriculture and environment correspondent Louise Cullen joined the research team on the southern shore of the Loch.

Alicia Duke is dipping a big yellow bucket into the water here on Mahari Slipway.

I'm an environmental field technician at UKCEH.

I remember watching television, watching, you know, sports nights.

on, you know, or any of those programs on BBC Northern Ireland or UTV.

And, you know, a message would flash up on the screen, you know, like something like, would key holders in the Limavady area please return to their premises? And just having that sudden, this dread would come over you, you know, that this was something, something awful.

I mean, we're living in a different Ireland now.

I think one of the biggest factors in him walking into that police station was the death of his son.

Former district reporter with BBC Northern Ireland, Nicola Weir.

I really do think that that tipped him over the edge.

His son unfortunately died while he was away from home.

And I picked up again when Seamus Heaney began saying that Paul was the new man.

And I then met him when he, working as a producer in BBC Northern Ireland, commissioned a piece from Horse Lips and sat patiently through our very, very, very amateur attempts to put together a long piece for him.

So, yeah, so I go back to 1964, 65? Yeah.

Well,

LAUGHTER I don't want to sound ageist or anything there, but actually the first manifestation of horse lips was on an RTE show, actually.

And she was very taken, very taken with you fellas, I think.

What do you remember, Paul, of that first session when you brought them into BBC Northern Ireland?

Well, in that case, we were working on a show called The Great Debate, which was an adaptation of Agallon the Shannarach, translated on one occasion as The Colloquy of the Ancients.