QUESTION Time in the Dail will be broadcast live on Teilifis na Gaeilge, under an agreement to be announced later today.
The Oireachtas broadcasts will take place in the early afternoon, from 2.30 p.m. to shortly after 4 p.m. They will be "on an experimental basis" for an initial three-month period, after which the service will be reviewed, according to sources close to the station.
The new departure will give viewers a powerful new medium in which to assess the performance of their elected representatives, during what is expected to be a crucial pre-election period.
It will also give local radio and regional newspapers direct access to exchanges between politicians during Question Time. These exchanges are frequently considered to be the most newsworthy events in the Dail.
TnaG goes on air tomorrow week, on Halloween night. It was originally expected to broadcast for about three hours a day, but will use repeats of material broadcast the previous day to boost its daily output to almost five hours.
Its schedule will include Boisini, a daily pre-school programme broadcast at 12.30 p.m. Programmes in the evening begin at 5 p.m. with an hour of programmes for teenage viewers. These will be followed by repeat broadcasts. The 7-8 p.m. slot will be filled by EuroNews, an English language news programme which focuses on European news and is edited in France.
The station's flagship soap opera, Ros na Run, will be broadcast at 8 p.m. four nights a week. The main evening news, which will have a strong regional flavour, goes out at 10 p.m.
Other programmes in the schedule include documentaries, drama, music programmes and sport. All the pre-recorded programmes will have subtitles in English available on teletext.