BROADCASTER SÍLE SEOIGE has responded to The Six O’Clock Show’s “gaslighting” apology it gave at the beginning its show yesterday over comments which were aired last week over the Irish language.
Broadcaster, businessman and former politician Ivan Yates last week, while a guest on the Virgin Media Television show, said that he “couldn’t be arsed” learning Irish and denounced the level of funding given to it by the State.
Host of the show Brian Dowling then got up from his seat and shook Yates’s hand, adding that he too has no Irish. Yates continued: “All this money we put into it, and there’s only 16,000 people in the country speaking it now.”
This claim was later found to be false. A clip of the comments, posted to the show’s social media, was taken down on Monday after it got much backlash from Gaeilgeorí.
Yesterday, Dowling acknowledged the backlash he recieved at the top of the show and said that the opinion he shared on the Irish language “ruffled some feathers”.
“This is a place of inclusion. This is a place of love. And this is definitely a place of laughter,” he added.
Native-speaker Síle Seoige – who was a guest on the programme at the time of the remarks to be interviews about her podcast and the Irish language – today said that the pair were “dissing the language and therefore dissing the guest”.
She told Newstalk’s Lunchtime Live today: “Nobody from the Six O’Clock Show has reached out to me to see how I’m doing.
“An apology was made at the start of the show, that didn’t actually apologise at all, and actually [...] it was gaslighting everybody that had a problem with it (the comments).
“The host was saying, ‘We are a show about love and inclusion and having fun’, and what it didn’t actually acknowledge was the hurt that it has caused amongst the people that watched it,” she added.
Yates yesterday doubled down on his comments telling The Journal there needs to be an “adult conversation” on the Irish language and the resources that its given.
Seoige today said she agrees with Yates and is in favour of discussing the language in that context but believes the situation on the television show was handled poorly.
She added that she understands the quips from Dowling and Yates were jokes that “backfired” but said it was “executed badly”.
Seoige said that when the event took place it didn’t bother her but, after seeing the reaction to the clip that was posted online, she now understands the backlash reflects “the feelings of a lot of people”.
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