Just to update the thread...I discovered to my great happiness that an indoor antennae costing 15 euro and plugged into the connection previously used by NTL/UPC picks up RTE, TnaG and TV3 pretty clearly. Satellite.ie came around and installed the dish and receiver box in about 2 hours. Using the remote control of the receiver box I can switch between the indoor antenna with the Irish channels and the dish channels. The satellite dish channels are crystal clear. It remains to be seen whether worse or more cloudy weather will affect the signal but I guess it wont' as the weather has already been pretty bad while the satellite freeview channels remain crystal clear. It works very well and I am very happy to be saving 300 euro a year for a once off cost.