That's the most important thing, and a search for mandarin figures, in the sense of people manipulating others, is not useful."But who needs to search? The names are rising to the surface regardless, and while the common cause of the tradition is all well and good, the private agendas of those involved cannot be ignored. It's a bandwagon that's out of control and even the mandarins themselves are finding it hard to resist jumping on board."Inevitably there is a process of selection for these people who are making television programmes about Irish music," says Shaun Davey; "and, with that, an element of judging is involved. And when it's presented on television, somehow the judgement comes across as being final, and that is not desirable."So, has he met the grand judge? "I've met O'Suillebhan once. It's great that all of a sudden people are into the music - although obviously there's a lot of bad albums out there." Indeed there are. Taking Ivers for a stroll around the record shops of Belfast, let alone Boston, revealed a mountain of dubious product, the most ludicrous of which was entitled Celtic Pan Pipes. But if there's a load of work coming out of it, then fair enough!"And work there is.

The Riverdance stage band, for a start, features a revolving pool of the best trad players around, including the awesome Eileen Ivers on fiddle.Ivers, an Irish-American, is quite happy to leave the academics and purists to it "All this debate," she says "I don't really see what the problem is. His magnum opus, The Pilgrim, involves a cast of 200 - from the traditions of Europe's seven Celtic nations. He maintains a stoical attitude towards the Celtic boom: "I have mixed feelings. I suppose, objectively, that it's very good for the Irish music industry. I'd be sorry to miss out on something good - and I suspect I probably am - although the record company has put one of my tracks on a couple of compilations recently and I've noticed that it's done rather well in terms of royalties."The lure of lucre is clearly a soother of doubts.

Eamon McElholm, the leader of Stockton's Wing - whose current album Letting Go was brilliantly produced by Davey - is a little less equivocal "It's fashionable now to be Celtic," he says "But I don't think any musician really thinks about it It's a marketing thing. And if O'Suillebhan has yet to find the precise recipe for alchemy, it's not for lack of trying. He at least gets the consolation prize of irritating the trad establishment on Philip King's TV marathons and writing the programme notes for Riverdance. Davey, recently nominated for a Bafta and currently scoring Trevor Nunn's film version of Twelfth Night, remains unimpressed. He has moved assuredly from the world of advertising jingles to the international concert stage with a succession of increasingly brilliant trad/ orchestral fusion works. Now the same song is selling Vauxhall cars on US TV ads while the group's manager, David Cavanagh, has set up shop with his U2 counterpart, Paul McGuinness, in fronting an Ireland-America export record label entitled Celtic Heartbeat.