[lookoutwales]

There would have been occasional use of Irish continuity on RTE since day one - mostly of the “Radio Telefis Eireann, you’re watching RTE One” or in the early days “Telefis Eireann, bealach a seacht” (Channel 7). Or around actual Irish language programming. Or on St Patrick’s Day (or more recently the ever inaccurately named Seachtain na Gaelige which occurs around that time and seems to go on for way longer than a week!). It seems to have extended recently to random announcements in Irish for otherwise English language programmes, which is a bit odd.

Probably true to say there's always been at least some bilingual element to RTE pres - start-up and closedown on both channels usually included a little message in Irish Gaelic.

Almost seemed to be mandatory, infact, although towards the mid 90s, it was sometimes dispensed with, going by YT material.

Come to think of it, the whole tone of continuity - especially on RTE1 - began to sound more relaxed and informal as it moved out-of-vision (announcers like Noel Fogarty spring to mind)