Radio review: Newstalk’s Kieran Cuddihy doesn’t have the giant-sized personality of George Hook (for good and bad)

Kieran Cuddihy has been in the old Right Hook slot full-time since autumn 2020, having subbed on and off for a few years before that, during Ivan Yates’ reign. He doesn’t have the giant-sized (for good and bad) personality of Hook — a man who, incidentally, is sorely missed in an increasingly bland, conformist radio landscape since leaving in 2017. (God, when you think how he might have dissented from the Pravda-esque “Official Narrative” during Covid…)

But Cuddihy is a good broadcaster, curious and intelligent, as well as an amiable fellow, which helps. He’s also admirably un-ideological. Obviously he has his biases, as we all do, and the show has a certain agenda, as all media does.

In general, though, I think Cuddihy makes a sincere effort to try and see both sides of a story. Perhaps most important of all, he keeps an open mind when listening to what someone is saying.

This week brought news that gardaí are considering using AI traffic cameras to monitor driver rule-breaking. Predictably enough, Official Ireland is gung-ho for this, regardless of reasonable concerns over privacy, cost or indeed effectiveness. And while Cuddihy seemed broadly supportive of the €100m measure, he wasn’t banging a drum for it either — plus he asked some important questions.

To Blake Boland, communications officer for AA Ireland, he suggested this was “moving us toward ever more surveillance”. Boland said, “That’s definitely a concern of ours. In one sense, anyone who doesn’t break the rules has nothing to worry about. But data protection is important.”

To Shane Ross, former transport minister, Cuddihy said, “When you mention AI, people understandably get a little spooked.” Ross replied, quite dismissively I thought, “For people to say this is some kind of infringement of privacy or rights is utterly vacuous.”

Cuddihy read out a listener text which said: “This is just another tool of mass surveillance” — but didn’t respond as all-too-many talk radio presenters often do, sneering and/or tutting haughtily. He just aired the text and let listeners make up their own minds on it.

Meanwhile, with Trinity engineering professor Brian Caufield on a different episode, Cuddihy returned to his theme of mass surveillance: “The phrase carries a certain amount of baggage, but that’s essentially what this is, isn’t it?”

Caufield answered, “Whether we want to open up our roads to Big Brother like this, that’s for the people in the Law Department to discuss. But the technology has a lot of benefits.” Surely something for everyone to discuss, I would have thought?

Actually, the most eye-opening part of that interview was when Caufield admitted that, while “a number of countries are looking at this technology, there’s no great case studies to show the benefits of it.” He added: “But why wouldn’t you (use it)?” Why, indeed…