TO WITNESS one of the truly great expressions of contemporary Irish culture, it is necessary merely to be in the Dail when the Department of the Gaeltacht is under discussion and Eamon O Cuiv, for example, is asking questions of Michael D. Higgins.

Both will speak in fluent and supple Irish. Their words will be translated as they speak by an able and experienced interpreter. At least some of the handful of deputies in the chamber will not be able to understand either the questions or the answers. But not one of them will dare to put on the headphones to listen to the translation.

To do so would be to question the universally acknowledged truth that proper Irish people understand the Irish language. Therefore, it is better to sit still, unable to understand what is being said in Irish.

This paradox seems to me to illustrate the problem at the heart of the rather weary debate about Teilifis na Gaeilge. A rational approach to the subject is made difficult by two opposite and equally destructive cultural pathologies.

One of the them is the cultural cringe that turns everything distinctively Irish into a source of embarrassment. But the other is the long and dishonourable tradition of egregious hypocrisy within the language movement itself.

The myth of the first national language, the unwillingness to recognise that Irish is not and never will be a majority language on this island, bear almost as much responsibility for the nonsense directed at Teilifis na Gaeilge as does the more obviously anti Gaelic reaction.

By far the most important argument for Teilifis na Gaeilge is one that has very little to do with the failed project of language revival on which this State embarked at its foundation. It is not about national identity or the soul of the people or any other romantic abstraction. It is about something less resonant but infinitely more important the rights of minorities.

The problem is that until we finally accept that the question is about what happens to a minority, not about "the people" or "the nation", then that argument will always be blunted.

The Irish speaking minority is small but significant. About 5 per cent of the population use as a first or main language. This part of the population constitutes a minority of roughly the same order as Protestants do. A further 10 per cent use the language with a degree of regularity, though this figure is somewhat exaggerated by the prominence of Irish in the school curriculum.

WHAT complicates these rather simple acts, though, is the huge gap between the reality and the rhetoric. Such a gap is what is known, to native speakers of English, as a lie. A very large proportion of the population tells lies about Irish. When filling out census forms, nearly a third of us claim to be Irish speakers.

Yet detailed social research finds that only about one in eight of us actually believe ourselves competent in the language. Somewhere between 15 and 20 per cent of us, even when filling out a form in strict confidence, feel the need to lie about Irish. It is quite possible that we are now more honest about sex than about language.

The dishonesty extends even to the idea of the Gaeltacht. Padraig O Riagain's 1992 study of the Corca Dhuibhne Gaeltacht found that only 54 per cent of its people felt that they could actually speak Irish with the fluency of a native speaker.

In the main population centre, Dingle, only a quarter of people can speak Irish at this level. And since these figures date from 1983, it is quite possible that the present reality is worse. If they are not so already, native speakers will soon be a minority even in the Gaeltacht. Yet, the Gaeltacht is still supposed to be both a vestige of majority Irish culture and a promise of what it will be like in the future.

And, paradoxically it is this overstatement the place of Irish in contemporary Irish culture that obscures the case for Teilifis na Gaeilge. The TDs who won't put on their headphones to follow a debate in Irish are merely reflecting a wider prejudice against the acknowledgment of a fact that is not even slightly shameful that a majority of people in Ireland can't speak the language, have no interest in the language and have not the slightest intention of ever learning it.

Recognising that such people constitute a majority and that their lack of interest in the language is entirely unproblematic is the first step towards sanity. The next is the concomitant recognition that the rights of minorities in a democracy are a serious business.

A society that is prepared to recognise those rights in modest but real ways is not an atavistic, gombeen republic, but a sophisticated and civilised democracy. The real hicks are the philistines who can't, after 25 years of ethnic conflict on this island, understand the importance of respect for cultural diversity.

Over 50 years ago, Myles na Gopaleen made a very effective reply in this newspaper to complaints about State spending on the Irish language. "The horrible charge is made that Mr de Valera is spending half a million a year on reviving Irish. I may be a wild paddy, but I take the view that the free expenditure of public money on a cultural pursuit is one of the few boasts this country can make.

"Whether we get value for all the money spent on Irish, higher learning, and on our university establishments is one question, but that we spend liberally on these things is to our credit and when the great nations of the earth (whose civilisations we are so often asked to admire) are spending up to £100 million (roughly) per day on destruction, it is surely no shame for our humble community of peasants to spend about £2,000 per day on trying to revive a language. It is the more urbane occupation."

NOT only is the establishment of Teilifis na Gaeilge a very much more urbane occupation than many pursued by our larger neighbours, it is also a genuinely educational one. It has the potential to teach us something more important than a language, namely respect.

Ever since the Greeks invented the word barbaroi, meaning those who don't speak like us", the right to speak has been connected to the right to be treated as an equal. Barbaroi became, in our majority language, barbarians, uncivilised people who don't deserve respect.

The amount of State money £10 million a year that is to be devoted to Teilifis na Gaeilge is a very small price to pay for the genuinely civilising effect of recognising that people who don't speak the way the majority does are nonetheless entitled to be treated as equal citizens.

If we can't take a little trouble to respect a linguistic minority within the State, we are almost certainly telling lies when we promise to take a much larger amount of trouble to respect a religious and political minority within the island. When the larger questions are being answered, we will continue to sit in mute incomprehension, afraid to plug in the headphones.