merrion street

Pictured at Radio Days Europe at the Convention Centre Dublin, Ireland was An Taoiseach, Enda Kenny and Kim Wilde, radio presenter and singer.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny spoke at the Radiodays Europe Conference in the Convention Centre this afternoon.

I grew up in an era where the radio was not only a source of news….but an occasion of sporting history, travel, imagination, democracy even revolution itself.

Like some of you here, I was a small child when the Hungarian Prime Minister Imre Nagy took to Radio Budapest to make his historic appeal to the country and the world.

For generations the radiogram in the corner of the kitchen or sitting room was an early audio version of the airports’ Arrivals or Departures.

Rome, Lisbon, Hilversum, Warsaw.

But despite the quantum change to the world, its a medium that has lost none of its currency, urgency or intimacy.

In a world of 140 characters you’ve got soul.

Because in the white noise of social and other media radio endures.

And with programmes like our own The South Wind Blows we know why.

Philip King inviting you in soothing, some would say divining, from the westerly tip of the Dingle peninsula to audiences across Ireland and the world.

It’s the essence of what radio is and does.

With its sense of shared connection community the idea that though we might be on our own or even lonely we are not entirely alone in our world.

Someone is speaking someone is listening.

Read his full speech

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