When the news is stronger than scripts

RadioReview: What does it take to edge Saturday View (RTÉ Radio 1) off its preordained course? Not even a full-blown riot in Dublin's O'Connell Street could disturb its well-ordered line-up last Saturday, so listeners relying on the programme for coverage of the unfolding events at the Love Ulster march were left seriously out of the loop.

The first half of Rodney Rice's programme featured an interview with the Tánaiste and Minister for Health Mary Harney, who hadn't anything particularly new to say and couldn't even comment usefully on the Neary report, which had yet to be published. This was followed by a bland sort of interview with Róisín Shorthall of the Labour Party - meanwhile the real news was happening just a couple of miles down the road from the studio.

At the tail-end of the programme, Rice tore himself away from planet politics to take a report from Barry Cummins who was on O'Connell Street. There was the sense that there had been trouble in the Parnell Square area but that it was all pretty much over.

"Three hundred protesters, and the gardaí weren't able to get them off the street," tutted Rice while Shorthall, as seriously lacking in information as the rest of us, said it was "very disappointing to hear about thuggish behaviour". And that seemed to be that.

If ever there was a time for a producer to tear up the script and go live to a story, Saturday's riot was it. Newstalk 106 had the nose for news and the street savvy to do just that. Ditching the regular sports coverage, the Dublin station took calls all afternoon from listeners stuck in the middle of the chaos, giving eyewitness reports of looting and gougers setting fire to cars on Nassau Street and from shoppers trapped in cafes and shops afraid to venture out on the streets. Just as the rioting had moved across town so had the story, but by then RTÉ had left for Fairyhouse. The station changed its evening schedule for an extended report and analysis but it was playing catch-up.

Listeners to Liveline who, in the days prior to the planned march, were treated to some Brit-bashing from some callers, could have guessed there was going to be trouble. On Monday and Tuesday Joe Duffy, resisting the urge to say "we told you so", covered the riots before moving on to predict chaos at the St Patrick's Day parade - due to be watched by seven million people, incidentally - unless something is done to control the supply of alcohol.

At Newstalk, two of the programmes were presented by stand-ins. David Norris for Seán Moncrieff in the afternoon sounded like he was broadcasting from his parlour - chatty, relaxed and not a little eccentric while Eamon Dunphy was replaced for the week by Irish Times journalist Kathy Sheridan. She made the transition from contributor to presenter with effortless aplomb in what has to be a difficult gig - after all it's not just Dunphy's show, he is the show and his interests and opinions fuel every item. For a novice presenter, she was calm and relaxed, and there wasn't as much sports coverage as usual which, for this listener at least, is a bonus.

A letter to The Irish Times this week regarding a fire in a Cavan orphanage prompted me to listen back to the Documentary on One: The Orphans that Never Were (RTÉ Radio 1, Sunday) and what a well-made piece of radio it was. Using a mixture of archive material, dramatic readings and interviews, Ciaran Cassidy told the story of a fire in St Joseph's industrial school in 1942 in Cavan town which killed 35 children and an elderly woman. The sprightly-sounding McKiernan brothers, now in their 80s, their voices still tight with sadness and bitterness, told how when their mother died the parish priest ordered that their two sisters be put in the orphanage, which was run by the Poor Clares. Their father had no say in the matter and the priest rejected out of hand an offer from their mother's friend to take the girls because she was a Protestant.

A survivor talked of being told to kneel by her bed to say prayers as smoke started filling the room while others spoke of the nuns' reluctance to unlock the doors to let the male rescuers in.

There was a tribunal of inquiry at the time which praised the nuns but damned the faulty wires, but such is the way of inquiries - including the Neary story, which was all over the airwaves this week - no one ever really got an answer to the only question that really matters - why?