That's as maybe. But a point that Jim Carrol made earlier is important; all kinds of music goes on in Ireland and excellent world-class traditional folk music is part of that and is extremely popular with the general public.

No doubt their will be many reasons musical, political and social.

I am not suggesting that we will get to an understanging of the success of traditional Irish folk music here or that we can simply follow the Irish experience even if we wanted to. But I do feel we could learn something from that experience.