For some years RTE has been faced with a series of questions relating to Gay Byrne's eventual retirement. Who would take over his radio and television shows? Could the shows continue without him, though they bore the marks of his character and personality? And if the shows were to be dropped, what would replace them, especially at a time when RTE was losing audiences to local radio, and a commercial television channel was about to come on air?

With much time to prepare for Mr Byrne's eventual retirement, RTE has shown no sign of being even half ready for his departure from radio at Christmas. Worse, the organisation has let him down in the end.

Though he is not one to speak in public about office politics, he is known to have been deeply upset by the nature of his radio programme in recent times. The quality of the material given him to present on air has deteriorated.

And those who resented working on the programme, at one level, were happy at another level to sit back and let him grind out mediocre material, with no serious thought going into production values. The problem was systemic: the programme lost its sharpness because the system ground him down with mediocrity. All this showed, and he is said to be quite angry about it.

At its best, the Gay Byrne Show worked because the presenter was a great showman, a skilful entertainer. It was in radio that the public really got to know Gay Byrne, or those facets of himself that he wished to reveal. In studio, at a time of the morning when many of his listeners were still half asleep, he began to perform as soon as the red light came on.

He cut into the tail-end of the signature tune with startling energy, not just talking to his people but performing for them. He never went along with that article of the producer's canon which says that, as a presenter, you broadcast to one person. The showman in him spoke to an audience, which at the show's peak was three-quarters of a million, each person separate and whole, many loving what he did and the way he did it, others hating his guts.

He was also aware of the importance of holding that audience. The man with the reputation for thrift in his private life never wasted anything as a broadcaster. It was this ingrained sense of economy that caused him, usually, to begin his performance with the first movement, as it were, and skip the overture. He did not come on and say, "Good morning. Welcome to the Gay Byrne Show".

He did not read out a list of goodies prepared for his listeners. He knew that all such nonsense was wasteful and boring; that listeners already knew exactly what came after the nine o'clock news headlines; and that some of them might go back to sleep if he did not get on with it.

Many broadcasting producers want to do what they think of as "serious stuff". A number of them come from the history and politics faculties of UCD or TCD. Because the Gay Byrne Show was classified as entertainment, and because those persons grew up thinking of Mr Byrne only as an entertainer, some were not eager to work on the show; and some of those who found themselves working on it were inclined not to know that as well as entertaining the public - sometimes while entertaining it - the show was identifying the issues of the time, and dealing with them. It was, in a real sense, a national service.

The arrival of John Caden as a producer on the show made a profound difference. Mr Caden was a working-class Dublin man who had spent long stretches of time as a boy in the western counties where his parents were born. Not only did he double the audience and adjust the focus of the show, but his familiarity with urban and rural life deepened its understanding of Ireland.

Gay Byrne is getting out of radio - and soon out of television - at a time when much of Irish broadcasting gives the impression that all the festering problems of an old and conservative society have been discussed and resolved. "Yes," they tell one another - and you hear them yawning as they speak - "we have dealt with contraception, divorce and, up to a point, abortion. What is left?"

I suspect that Gay Byrne, with his years upon him, would tell those people two things. Firstly, that when changes have been wrought in your society, you have to teach yourself how to live with them. Secondly, that this affluent and functioning Ireland that we hear so much about will present more problems for its people than the conservative old Ireland ever did.

He might also tell them that broadcast programming now reaching us by satellite indicates that the problems of the affluent are less susceptible of treatment than those of the poor; and furthermore that the affluent countries, notably the US, have made a mess of broadcasting and disjoined it from its conscience, as we are now doing here.

The mark of radio during Gay Byrne's professional life was of the community's responsibility to the individual, a sacrament long in coming. Perhaps broadcasting now needs to examine the individual's responsibility to the community, a covenant remote from the agenda of affluent and greedy societies such as our own has become.

Increasingly, as time passed, one knew that the Byrne team was required to make programmes which would capture a large audience and engage the fixed minds of advertising agents, a class whose baneful influence on all media content is growing. The show did that; but, to its credit, it also did something far more worthwhile and lasting.

Of those who might replace Gay Byrne with honour, I believe Joe Duffy to be the best bet. Marian Finucane is busy and needed where she is. Joe has strong radio skills, as well as a conscience and a soul. He may not be smooth enough, alas, for the boardroom smoothies of RTE.

Tom O'Dea was the TV critic of the Irish Press 1964-83. He is now a freelance journalist