Call for separate Irish language and literature courses
March 16, 2011
AN COIMISINÉIR Teanga Seán Ó Cuirreáin has proposed that Irish-language tuition be split into two separate school courses as part of the promised Government review.
Mr Ó Cuirreáin said one course could focus on the language basics for non-native speakers. A second course would focus on literature and language history as an option for native speakers and those pupils with a good command of Irish. He was speaking in Galway yesterday at the publication of his annual report which found only 1.5 per cent of the administrative staff of the Department of Education and Skills could provide a service in Irish. The same department was among a number of public bodies which were subject to almost a dozen investigations by his staff under the provisions of the Official Languages Act.
Mr Ó Cuirreáin welcomed the Government’s commitment to review Irish-language tuition. The programme for government has dropped the Fine Gael proposal to abandon compulsory Irish for the Leaving Certificate, and Mr Ó Cuirreáin said a review was a far better option. However, he agreed there was a need for reform of the current system, whereby children are given 1,500 hours of Irish-language tuition over 13 years in primary and secondary school and still leave without a “basic ability”. “We are not getting value for money. The basic ability is not there when children are leaving [education]. There is a school of thought that we should possibly have two different courses. One would be a communications course where the emphasis would be on writing, reading and speaking Irish, and only on that,! he said.
“A second course would be for people with a natural interest in the language: literature, poetry, drama and so on.” Mr Ó Cuirreáin said a language-based course could result in school-leavers having sufficient command of the language to “watch TG4 or read a newspaper … Certainly abandoning the language will not achieve that.” Mr Ó Cuirreáin described as “alarming” the confirmation by his office that only 1.5 per cent of the administrative staff of the Department of Education and Skills could provide service in Irish – a decrease of 50 per cent in the past five years. He also described as a “myth” the suggestion that translating official documents to Irish cost far more than their production in English. He noted that the full cost of translating Clare County Council’s draft development plan for the six-year period between 2011 and 2017 was EUR10,112 – less than one-third of the amount suggested in a media report.
However, an investigation by his office found it cost over EUR350,000 to prepare such a document in English. “This equates to 97.3 per cent of the budget for the English version and 2.7 per cent for the Irish version,” he said. Very few official documents were required by law to be provided bilingually, he said. Current legislation allowed for publication electronically rather than in print form, as long as both official languages were treated equally. Some 700 complaints were made last year to the commissioner about difficulties accessing State services through Irish – more complaints than were made in any year since the office was first established, he said. Most complaints were resolved through informal negotiation with the relevant public body, or by providing advice to the complainant.
The Irish Times – Lorna Siggins
