Mistaken figures on the cost of translations
December 13, 2013
A point of information: European translation costs amount to €330m per annum according to the European Commission — in total
So Mr Barry Walsh (Letters, Dec 10) is deluded in thinking that €800m is spent on translating European documents to Irish.
He is also mistaken in thinking that if we revoked the status of Irish as an official language the teaching of Irish to schoolchildren would benefit in any way. Until we challenge the absolute ignorance and misinformation being spouted, the fundamental attitude towards the Irish language as a thorn in the side of our national expenditure and schooling system will remain.
This ignorance will continue to obscure the fact that Irish speakers are citizens of Ireland and Europe with every right to access services in their own language.
For example, I may not be a particularly sporty person myself, but that does not mean I begrudge every cent of my European tax money that funds sporting resources or amenities.
Síne Nic an Ailí
Gleann Bhaile na Manach
Baile na Manach
Co Átha Cliath
www.irishexaminer.com
Foilsithe ar Gaelport.com 13 Nollaig 2013
Irish Examiner – Litir chuig an Eagarthóir
For children with no baptismal certificate the school gates seem to be closed
December 13, 2013
Opinion: The State surely has a duty to offer parents access to secular education for their children
My son, who will be four years old in March, is not baptised. He has been rejected from all four national schools in our area – Dublin 6. I put his name down for all of them, two of them religious schools, when he was a baby.
The little Church of Ireland school, which is the nearest one to our home, has had his name on its application list since he was six weeks old. In its letter last month the board of management “regrets to inform” me that my application has been “unsuccessful”.
“Your child is currently number 177 on our waiting list … All offers of places were made in accordance with the school enrolment policy.”
The criteria according to which children can get in the queue are then set out. There are 11 categories, the first being “Church of Ireland children of the [local] parishes,” followed by “COI siblings/Protestant siblings” followed by COI children from outside the parishes. Next in are COI children from inter-church marriages, then other Protestant children, then other siblings, then children of inter-church marriages where the child is not COI, children of staff, Roman Catholic Children, Orthodox children and last, the category into which my son falls, “other children”.
This school will take any child of almost any faith from anywhere in the country before they will take an unbaptised child living around the corner.
The Roman Catholic school is a little further away. My son is 117th on the waiting list. His name has been down since he was a baby, but date of application is not relevant there, the principal told me. The letter turning him away from there said siblings of current pupils were prioritised. This is understandable and “all 17 such applicants are being offered places”.
“The remaining 17 places are being offered to Catholic children resident within the Catholic parish … We regret that we are unable to offer your child a place in our junior infant class for 2014.”
The waiting game
The other two other schools, one a non-denominational Gaelscoil and the other multi-denominational, should surely be more welcoming and as I had his name down with the multi-d since he was three weeks old I was hopeful. However when I called I was told he was “about 220th on the list”. The enrolment secretary told me parents travelled from across Dublin to enrol their children there, such is the demand. Again at at the Gaelscoil, with parents travelling from across the city to get their kids in, he’s 239th on the waiting list.
There is clearly huge demand for school places in Dublin 6, not helped by parents – including myself – applying to several schools, and this affects all families. What is also clear however is that denominational or faith schools’ enrolment criteria impact in a gross and disproportionate way on children such as my son, by excluding them simply because they have not been baptised. To be clear, these State-funded faith-schools – which account for 96 per cent of primary schools – are allowed to direct a religiously based exclusion at children as young as four. This is unacceptable. It is particularly heinous in a democracy which describes itself as a Republic.
www.irishtimes.com
Foilsithe ar Gaelport.com 13 Nollaig 2013
The Irish Times – Kitty Holland
Nothing wrong with Irish as EU language
December 13, 2013
Regarding Barry Walsh’s reply to my letter on Irish in the EU, may I point out that the EU has 24 official languages, including not only world languages such as English, French and German, but also smaller national languages such as Irish, Latvian and Maltese.
The total EU translation budget is less than €2 per EU citizen per year for all 24 EU languages. The figure of €800m per annum covers all 24 EU languages, not just Irish. This is a budget to which Ireland contributed before Irish became an official EU language and to which we would contribute if Irish were not an official EU language. There is no saving to be had here.
A cornerstone of the European project is linguistic and cultural tolerance and diversity. Because of this EU laws are made available in all EU languages. Cases in Irish are not uncommon in the Irish courts, especially the superior courts, and EU law is often invoked in these cases. The Irish texts are not museum pieces but part of the range of this living and working European language.
Conradh na Gaeilge campaigns on an ongoing basis to improve the teaching of Irish in schools. We seek better teacher training, that another subject such as drama or sport be taught through Irish to all primary pupil on a phased basis and the normalisation of Irish outside of the class room. Sadly the EU does not have provision for giving us €800m to this end. This is a matter of nation competence.
We also campaign for an integrated language curriculum and for teaching through third languages as immersion is the most effective teaching method. We support the EU’s Mother Tongue Plus 2 Barcelona declaration.
Sadly the Department of Education seems wed to an English-only mentality, but that can change.
Finally, Irish being an official EU language has caused an increase in interest in Irish and continental languages at third level. Were the derogation to lapse this would blossom further. English is no longer enough; negativity towards Irish saps morale, and opinion based on inaccuracy is dangerous.
Julian de Spáinn
Ard-Rúnaí
Chonradh na Gaeilge
Rath Garbh, Baile Átha Cliath 2
www.irishexaminer.com
Foilsithe ar Gaelport.com 13 Nollaig 2013
Irish Examiner – Litir chuig an Eagarthóir
All aboard for the Gaeilgeoir grenadiers…
December 13, 2013
Well, that certainly put the cat amongst the pigeons. You may remember — but you can be forgiven if you don’t, it is a busy time of the year, after all — that the dreaded topic of the Irish language was mentioned in iSpy earlier this week, following a row over the number of civil servants who can speak it.
I pointed out that if you want to learn and use Irish with like-minded people, then good luck to you — after all, learning another language can never be a bad thing. I also, as it happens, pointed out that TG4 is undoubtedly the finest, most innovative channel on this island and, against all my predictions at the time, has gone on to be a massive success. In fact, TG4 is one of those occasions when it’s nice to be proved wrong and the Little Broadcaster That Could has done more to make the language more relevant than any number of educational drives ever could. But I also believe that it is not the Government’s business to be hiring and training more civil servants to speak the language.
This isn’t merely an economic argument, although that is compelling in itself.
No, the real objection stems from simple common sense — if you can find a civil servant who can conduct business in Irish, then good for you. If you can’t, simply use English.
Irish is not, and never will be, anything more than a hobby in a country where English is the spoken language. Not being accommodated in your quest to speak Irish is an inconvenience, not a blatant act of discrimination. Not that you would think it from the furious emails which came in demanding I be hoisted above the roof of the Indo and made to publicly recite chapters 1-5 of Peig. The common thread to all those complaints was a sense of hysterical grievance and hilariously disproportionate anger that is now the modus operandi of any rights lobby whose feelings are hurt.
So let’s get a sense of perspective and stop debasing the meaning of the word ‘discrimination’. Irish speakers are not persecuted in this country, no matter how loudly they may claim otherwise and, as I said, the worst thing they face is mild inconvenience which, let’s face it, is hardly some act of ethnic or cultural cleansing.
The levels of paranoid absurdity reached new levels of hyperbole when someone complained bitterly about “an English language journalist” belittling their mother tongue, while another bleated that: “We have the right to be here. You can’t take that way from us.”
Jesus, who was saying that Irish speakers don’t have the right to be here? Obviously, nobody was, but these florid, self-righteous claims of persecution are par for the course when people are complaining — be they gay advocates, Travellers’ rights groups or Muslims or… well, the list of people ready and waiting, poison pen (or worse) at the ready to start demanding someone’s head seems to grow by the day.
We’ve become addicted to grievance and the Irish language lobby is well versed in the art of claiming discrimination. But as much as my interest in the language itself is minimal, and I don’t have any animosity towards it, I was surprised and quite gratified by the number of respondents who actually placed themselves in their own stereotype.
I was, I’ve been told repeatedly over the last few days, a “disgrace to Ireland”, which was one of those febrile rhetorical flourishes that these people like to use, while another angrily condemned me for not caring enough about Northern Ireland, while more than one email contained 800 years’ worth of injustices to the Irish language.
One after the other, these people were quicker to force themselves into a narrow, lazy definition of what it means to be ‘ truly’ Irish than I ever could have been. Yet in amongst all the furious responses from people who really, really want to see themselves as a persecuted minority were the missives of support. These tended to come from people who simply see no sense in wasting millions to keep a language on life support.
None of them were calling for the Balkanisation of the Gaeltacht, nobody is suggesting that Irish speakers should be made wear a sign identifying themselves (a shamrock, instead of a Star of David, perhaps) and nobody is denying anyone the right to learn the language. But it is absurd to expect the Government to foot the bill.
As one angry woman wrote: “Irish is a language in a precarious position. But she’s not dead yet. What she needs is a government that upholds its promises to protect and promote it.” No, that’s not what we need.
In fact, if Irish dies out, then so be it. Call it survival of the fittest, but it is not the job of the State to ensure the survival of anything — that is the job of the people who are interested in it. But I do hold my hands up to one factual error.
I mistakenly said that Seán Ó Cuirreáin was head of an Irish language organisation, Teanga. In fact, he held the post of commissioner for the language.
If only somebody had been around to translate into English for me. Now, where do I got to complain?
www.independent.ie
Foilsithe ar Gaelport.com 13 Nollaig 2013
Irish Independent – Ian O’Doherty
Géarchéim anois gan Coimisinéir na Gaeilge
December 12, 2013
Troid ar son chearta teanga
December 12, 2013
Coimisinéir an choinsiasa
December 11, 2013
Irish speakers
December 11, 2013
Why do quite a number of Englishlanguage journalists think it is so smart and witty of them to show their ignorance of what it involves to be an Irish speaker?
It is not a hobby, it is not something I wish to practise twice a week for the craic, but it is every bit as intrinsic to my being as the colour of my skin. In this wonderfully diverse world of ours, a world where people are commended for defending their rights, are these totally unenlightened comments by Ian O’Doherty ( Irish Independent, December 9) acceptable?
Aine Nic Niallais, Indreabhan, Co na Gaillimhe
www.independent.ie
Tireless worker for the Irish language
December 11, 2013
I was disappointed to hear that Seán Ó Curreáin, Language Commissioner, is to resign. Séan worked tirelessly for the Irish language and Gaeltacht communities for the past eight years in his role.
He has told us that little headway was made regarding the Irish language in our state institutions in 2012 — legislated language plans were left languishing and more plans were out of date for more than three years. This is along with the other setbacks that the language has received ie the reduced status of COGG, the Council for Education, in Irish language medium schools. We are well aware of the Gaeltacht community’s language rights under the Official Languages Act. These rights are being denied inside our offices of state. State employees must be happy to serve us in Irish and it must be certified that public administration systems have enough staff with a working knowledge of Irish. The exemplary work by Ó Cuirreáin must be continued to ensure that we have a strong Gaeltacht community in the years to come.
Máire Uí Shíthigh
Baile an Fheirtéaraigh
Trá Lí
Co Chiarraí
www.irishexaminer.com
Irish language policy is deluded
December 10, 2013
With all due respect to Julian de Spáinn of Conradh na Gaeilge, his recent letter (Dec 6) is a good illustration of the scale of the delusion that exists in the Irish language lobby about how best to preserve the national language.
Mr de Spáinn says that the status of Irish as an official EU language makes Irish “our bridge to Europe”. In reality, however, the only concrete effect of this status is that reams of obscure official documents are required to be translated into Irish costing European taxpayers a staggering €800m annually. Given that, according to the most recent census, just 1.8% of the population use Irish as part of their daily lives, it is clear that only a tiny number of people in Ireland (let alone in Europe) benefit from this enormous expenditure. So what exactly does this “official status” achieve in terms of preserving the language, when the only people who derive any benefit from it are the tiny number of people who already speak Irish?
So here’s a radical idea. How about we seek to revoke the status of Irish as an official language, and request that this €800m be redirected from translating endless documents and reports, to the direct teaching of Irish to schoolchildren. This would effectively double the amount being spent on the teaching of Irish, and could literally bring about a revolution in how we teach the language. For example, with such vast money at our disposal we could send every child in the country with an interest in the language to the Gaeltacht for a couple of weeks a year. Surely that would do more for the language than the translation of dust-gathering EU reports?
Mr de Spáinn goes on to mention the 180 jobs as translators and says, quite outrageously, that “there is no other way to dramatically increase the number or Irish people working with the EU”. This is an extraordinarily blinkered point of view. In Germany alone, there is a massive shortage of skilled engineers, with an estimated 70,000 vacancies in this sector which cannot be filled. So how about instead of spending €800m to create 180 jobs translating documents into Irish, we spend this money on teaching some of the thousands of skilled construction workers who lost their jobs in the crash to speak German, and take up these well-paid jobs just a two-hour flight away? Irish language groups tend to froth at the mouth at the thought of continental languages being taught to Irish people, but this is hardly surprising given that they seem not to want any Irish people to learn Irish either.
The status of Irish as an official EU language does nothing to preserve the language. All it does is effectively put Irish on a pedestal in a museum, like some kind of stuffed dodo, to be admired by a tiny number of people at a cost of €800m per annum. Only a truly radical shift in our attitudes will prevent our language from going the way of the dodo.
Barry Walsh
Clontarf
Dublin 3
www.irishexaminer.com
