"IT's the cut off of the television people are concerned about in Donegal," said a man when asked about the vasectomy row. "If people can't have television, what can they have?" he wondered bemoaning the threat to the transmission.

He forecast electoral doom for the Government if it didn't sort out the deflector problem, something the Minister for Communications, Mr Dukes, clearly signalled yesterday he wanted to achieve.

The man was a supporter of the leader of Independent Fianna Fail, Harry Blaney.

Mr Blaney is chairman of the North Western Health Board since July of last year and until July of this year. He had no recollection of the health board approving the vasectomy service, and believes "it must have been nodded through as part of a report".

It was indeed, according to health board minutes, on May 15th, 1995.

Mr Blaney says it ought to have been discussed at committee, then board members would have known what they were voting for. Many members of the board had not realised what they were approving then, he said.

He was not even aware of what a vasectomy was until he heard about the clinic on March 14th.

The coalition of Pro life, Family Solidarity and Independent Fianna Fail, which picketed the vasectomy service at the hospital in Letterkenny, has been, for many in the town, more a source of wit than doughty inspiration.

The picket prompted the closure of the clinic, a decision reversed yesterday.

"One thing's for sure," remarked a middle aged woman, referring to the picketers, "none of them fellas will need the snip.

But no one in the hospital would talk about the issue on the record. A busy, noisy place, it was as silent as a Trappist monastery where the clinic was concerned whether people were for or against it.

One doctor agonised over whether he should talk but he had made a commitment to his family that he would not. They had come in for "a lot of flak" since he took part in a picket.

And other doctors, believed to be supportive of the clinic, fell they had to stay silent too.

There was a confidentiality clause in their contracts which meant they had to remain silent about hospital affairs, they said. That was the position of all hospital employees spoken to.

Privately, however, there was much that was bawdy. And there was banter, too. An exchange on the hospital stairwell outside the maternity ward could well be an outward sign of contemporary Ireland.

Labour Senator Sean Maloney met a priest from elsewhere in the county and there was a lively, good humoured exchange of insult and injury. With such underlying ferocity, only wit could have mitigated the clash, as it did, and the charm that comes so easily to Donegal people.

It ended with Senator Maloney asking: "And what brings you here [to the maternity ward]?" "Or you," retorted the priest, "I bet you had it [a vasectomy] done." If politics is a substitute for war, then such banter must be the civilised equivalent of "pistols at dawn".

Senator Maloney is less than admiring of the Catholic Bishop of Raphoe, Dr Boyce.

"Sad and sinister" is his description of Dr Boyce's intervention in the controversy, "challenging the State with the authority of the church".

The "moral fibre of Derry", 20 miles away, had not disintegrated since vasectomy became available there "30 years ago", he said. Senator Maloney knew "hundreds" of men in Letterkenny who had the operation and they continued to remain perfectly happy in every way.

Still, he welcomed Dr James Mehaffey's intervention in the matter. He felt the Church of Ireland bishop of Derry and Raphoe spoke, "not just for his members but for a lot of Catholics as well".

Dr Mehaffey was saying "the church should stay out of the bedroom". Dr Boyce, on the other hand, was "aloft ... aloft from the people".

In person, however, Dr Boyce seems neither sad nor sinister.

Not surprisingly, he is wary of media. But he is also courteous and pleasant, with the natural guard of a shy man. Conservative he may be, by conviction and faith, but by temperament he is no authoritarian. This is no moral bully boy.

Nor for that matter, would Mr Harry Blaney of Independent Fianna Fail appear to be. By conviction he, too, is against vasectomy. But, as with so many of those who oppose the clinic, he says it is because there are far greater medical needs to be satisfied at the hospital.

Mr Blaney is a salt of the earth Donegal man. At 71 he is approaching his last chance to become a TD. Nobody doubts his sincerity. A Blaney without sincerity, locally, being as likely as snow in August.

But Letterkenny is changing.

The woman in the pub was annoyed. She had just been served brandy in a wine glass. And while a duo in the background sang Brown Eyed Girl, she protested and protested. Eventually the bar staff found a brandy glass for her.

"We're not all like this in Letterkenny," she said then. No, but prosperity there has brought with it an appreciation of the good things, such as choice in TV viewing, choice in planning one's life, and the pleasure of having brandy in a brandy glass. The pain of the past is giving way. And the pub in which the woman complained is owned by another Blaney brother.

On the street a short time later a young man told his girlfriend and her two female companions: "My fathers lives for the death notices on MWR [local radio]." And they laughed. Then all four skipped off, singing Always Look On The Bright Side of Life.

It's like that in Letterkenny.