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It’s time to speak up for spoken Gaelic

February 27, 2014

We need more emphasis on spoken Gaelic and we need more opportunities to use our native language, without any pressure or ‘compulsion’ towards perfect grammar.

The State must play its part, as Gaeilgeoir Bláthnaid Ní Chofaigh intimated recently in an RTÉ interview, but so must businesses and every public service outlets. It would be so easy to have an oifigeach Ghaeilge, employed as a bilingual public servant, at a check-out, desk, or customer-service counter that displays a public notice ‘Gnó Tré Ghaeilge’. It would give us a chance to use our ‘cúpla focal’ without putting any public servant under pressure and would reveal a friendly attitude towards the use of Irish. I find it hard to comprehend that millions of euro are being spent on translating EU documents into Irish, when our native tongue is slowly slipping away from our grasp here at home. The time for paying ‘lip-service’ to the cúpla focal should be in the ‘aimsir caite’. We must promote its use in everyday conversation, in schools, and especially in the public service, to encourage the ‘shy Gaeilgeoir’ and spread a Gaeilge-friendly atmosphere i dTír ghlas na hÉireann.

Eilís Uí Bhriain
Caislean UíLiatháin
Co Chorcaí

www.irishexaminer.com

Imperative that we support our language

February 24, 2014

I, like many thousands, took part in the “La Mór na Gaeilge” rally recently and the majority of the protesters were young people, particularly students of Gaelcholáistí.

A large number of participants came from all parts of Ireland. As the father of four children attending a Gaelcholáiste in West Dublin, it is imperative that the Government clearly states its honest intentions with regard to the future of the Irish language. Funding for Irish-language bodies and Gaeltacht regions have been drastically reduced in every budget since the onset of the economic crisis. These cuts have had a detrimental effect on the cultural, artistic and educational communities of Ireland. May I through the medium of your esteemed newspaper urge the people to make the Irish language a big issue in the run-up to the May elections?

Paul Doran
Clondalkin
Dublin 22

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EU respects Irish more than leaders do

February 18, 2014

In January, Irish Language Commissioner Seán Ó Cuirreáin announced his intention to step down following the failure by Government to implement legislation to improve services to the public through Irish.

His decision was met with uproar in the Irish-speaking community , not least because of the fear of no Irish representation in government, or the fear that he would not be replaced. Degrading the status of Irish serves to erode long-standing traditions. I understand that Ireland has evolved into a much more diverse culture, but we need to respect indigenous languages. Speaking Irish is neither a political statement, highbrow or attention seeking — it’ s a human right. When Irish is supposedly the first language of Ireland, it seems bizarre that a business cannot contact our government in Irish. To them, it’s an indication of the hands off approach to its conservation. Realistically , Irish speakers know it will always be a minority language. However, that is not to say it deserves any less respect. The EU has shown great leadership in this regard. For example, you can contact an EU institution in Irish and expect to receive a response in that language.

The EU could be forgiven for not having people who can speak Irish but they do. They decided in 2007 to treat the language with dignity and respect. Meanwhile in Ireland, we shouldn’ t have to campaign for the most basic language rights, but we do. Conradh na Gaeilge staged a protest in Dublin dubbed “walk for your rights” on Saturday. Like lot’s of Irish people, I’m not naturally inclined to protesting. I prefer to let off steam in an article or video. However, the problem is that most of the Irish media seldom give this issue the time of day. And while it primarily affects a small proportion of our society , it is a huge issue in their lives.

I was never particularly that good at Irish in school. Most of the Irish I’ve learned has been through doing media in Irish. By taking part in something ‘real’, you realise that Irish is a language and not something that was just in vented to fill the hours of school. Personally, I quite like being bilingual. Apart from being handy, I find that it makes you a better communicator. That, and it offers a lot of opportunities. Irish has a largely silent presence in the country — on signs and in trains. But aside from that, we tend to use it for decoration rather than for its full potential. Irish has existed since at least the 5th century AD . In that regard, it seems a major disservice to make a language redundant simply because it is incon venient to civil servants. Regardless of our Government’ s financial situation, being able to speak a language is a right — not a privilege.

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Anger over plans to merge two of Cork’s oldest schools

February 12, 2014

The proposed merger of two of Cork’s oldest primary schools is causing controversy on the city’s northside.

The amalgamation plans for Scoil Mhuire Fatima boys’ school at the North Monastery and nearby St Vincent’s Convent National School were announced by their trustees to staff yesterday.

There has been primary education since 1811 at the North Mon, which has 171 second to sixth-class pupils, while nearby St Vincent’s, which has male pupils up to first class and girls up to sixth, first opened in 1847.

However, the Edmund Rice Schools Trust, which controls former Christian Brothers schools, and the Sisters of Charity want to amalgamate them by next September. The newly named school would see pupils and staff of the North Mon primary relocate to the St Vincent’s site.

One North Mon teacher said staff were shocked and angry at the news delivered in a meeting after school yesterday, particularly at the plan their building would be taken over by a neighbouring gaelscoil. The move will also be an issue for parents, particularly with months to decide important issues such as uniform policies.

The Irish National Teachers’ Organisation said concerns have been raised about the plan and full consultation with all partners is essential.

“It is important that future school provision is planned properly rather than quickly,” a spokesperson said.
In addition, the Presentation Sisters have agreed to change the North Presentation Primary School near the North Cathedral from a girls’ school with infant boys to a co-educational primary — but on a phased basis. The trustees said the restructuring process will include consultations with each school’s board, staff, and parents.

“This new structure will provide a more secure future for these schools. The ethos of the existing trustees will continue within the two newly restructured schools,” said a joint statement from the trust bodies and the Cork Catholic diocesan trustees.
The plan is for primary education to continue at the North Monastery, as the expanding Gaelscoil Pheig Sayers would move into the vacated site from temporary accommodation in nearby Farranferris. It would also transfer from diocesan trusteeship to the ERST.
The combined enrolments at the four schools fell from 947 in 2007 to 868 last year, but Scoil Mhuire Fatima’s and St Vincent’s fell by 64 and 47 respectively, while the other two schools have grown.
All four are in the North Cathedral parish, and Catholic Bishop of Cork and Ross, John Buckley, agrees in principle with the plans.

“If the trustees are in agreement and the schools are in agreement, the patron would be supportive,” his spokesperson said.

The trusts said a change of trustees for Gaelscoil Pheig Sayers would allow pupils more secure progression to Gaelcholáiste Mhuire on the North Mon campus.

www.irishexaminer.com

‘Irish language policy risks being seen as a sham’

January 27, 2014

Only six of the 16 officers responsible for the use of Irish in Government departments can speak the language themselves, the outgoing Irish language commissioner has said.

Seán Ó Cuirreáin pointed the fact out to TDs and senators who he addressed about his decision last month to resign from the job in February. He said he is stepping aside two years ahead of schedule because he can do no more for the language rights of Irish speakers and Gaeltacht communities. After 10 years in the role, he said Government policy on Irish is in danger of being seen as a sham with inadequate access to public services and departments self-auditing compliance with legal requirements. The job was advertised publicly last week, but Mr Ó Cuirreáin told the Oireachtas sub-committee on the 20-Year Strategy for the Irish Language the same problems will exist for his successor.

He said the amalgamation of the work of his office later this year into the Ombudsman’s office was never discussed with him before being announced two years ago. Mr Ó Cuirreáin said there is no possibility of success for a new system to increase the number of civil servants fluent in Irish; and the system to develop language plans or language schemes in State bodies is in a sorry state because of ineffective implementation. He said it is more than two years since a review of the Official Languages Act began, but first steps to amend it have not yet been taken by publishing heads of a bill, now due before the summer.

“If the State can not provide assurances, when the legislation is being amended, that it will ensure that it can communicate in Irish with Gaeltacht communities without terms and conditions, and that it will have adequate staff in public administration with proficiency in Irish, then I believe that its policy will be viewed as a sham,” he said. He said the 16 officers nominated by Government departments to implement the act and liaise with his office were all very talented and diligently carry out their responsibilities. But only six out of the 16 officers in question have Irish themselves, he said. Sinn Féin senator Trevor Ó Clochartaigh said this was scandalous when there are people in the public service with Irish who would be happy to use it in their day-to-day work but do not get the chance.

Mr Ó Cuirreáin said it was no good if a department returns a call with someone who can speak Irish but has no knowledge of the subject the caller wanted to discuss. Sub-committee vice- chair, Fianna Fáil’s senator Labhrás Ó Murchú, said minister of state Dinny McGinley will be given a chance to respond when he appears before it soon. Sinn Féin TD Peadar Tóibín said they should also bring in secretaries general of each department and Education Minister Ruairi Quinn. The commissioner said two cases investigated by his office caused concern about the Department of Education’s attitude. In one, the department had directed a Gaeltacht primary school to appoint a teacher from a panel of teachers up for redeployment who said they did not have enough Irish to teach there. In another case, he said the department refused to provide the option to study subjects through Irish up to Leaving Certificate at a school in the Donegal Gaeltacht. Mr Tóibín said it was disrespectful to the commissioner and to people in the Gaeltacht that there was no Government TD at the hearing. The absent coalition members were committee chair Michael McCarthy and Kevin Humphries (both Labour TDs), and Fine Gael senator Hildegarde Naughton.

www.irishexaminer.com

Irish ‘blocked’ in the North

January 17, 2014

Growth and promotion of the Irish language in Northern Ireland is being blocked by hostile attitudes in Stormont and a lack of support for its use in the courts and in education.

The Council of Europe have warned authorities they may also be in breach of a charter of rights because of delays and attempts to block requests for bilingual street names.

The review of minority languages in the UK said the Government has not been able to justify banning the use of Irish in the courts.

www.irishexaminer.com

The surprising people speaking up for Irish

January 6, 2014

THE resignation of the Irish-language commissioner, Seán Ó Cuirreáin, is “undoubtedly the worst blow to the Irish language in many years,” say Irish-language group, Conradh na Gaeilge.

Ó Cuirreáin, appointed as the first commissioner in 2004, and re-appointed in 2010, says many civil servants and public body employees are only capable of conducting business through English. Ó Cuirreáin accused the Government of hypocrisy, and said Irish speakers in Gaeltachts were being neglected. But the Irish language is being embraced by new speakers, and this is welcomed by Foras na Gaeilge, which is responsible for the promotion of the Irish language. Dr John Walsh, a lecturer in Irish at NUI Galway, says Irish is attracting unlikely practitioners. Walsh is involved in an EU-funded project, ‘New Speakers in a Multilingual Europe’, led by Heriot-Watt University in Scotland. It involves 15 partners from Europe. Other languages include Basque, Catalan, Galician and Scottish Gaelic.

Walsh defines a ‘new speaker’ as someone who has learned Irish outside of the home; either at school, through adult classes or some other formal means. “Our project is about finding out what has encouraged these people to make thedecision to learn Irish, what their views on Irish are, what their experiences ofspeaking it are, and how they relate to native speakers,” Dr Walsh says. A few non-Irish nationals have been interviewed for the project, which is in its early stages. “The non-Irish nationals are a very interesting group, because they don’t come to the language with the baggage that a lot of Irish people bring to it. “They may be motivated through heritage connections to Ireland, or they’re simply people who are interested in integrating more fully with Irish culture. Some may be interested in moving to the Gaeltacht,” he says.

Dr Walsh says that he knows of a student from the Czech Republic who is learning Irish, and he’s aware of a number of West of Ireland-based Africans learning the language. “I know that there’s a certain amount of non-Irish nationals going to Gaelscoileanna. They’re very often people who are linguistically open, because many of them would speak three different languages already. I had students in the past who worked in a school in west Dublin, where a lot of the non-Irish nationals were very well-disposed towards the language. Their parents wanted to learn it as well,” Dr Walsh says. Some enjoy learning another language. “Irish can be an interesting challenge for them. It’s not a burden for them,” he says. However, some of the new speakers “experience hostility from Irish people. Some people don’t like the fact that a French or Spanish person would know more Irish than them. But, in general, they’ve viewed with admiration.”

Walsh says that few non-Irish people studying Irish at NUI Galway are complete beginners. They come to the university having previously attended an introductory course. “Irish is taught in a lot of universities outside of Ireland. You can study Irish in Poland, and there are dozens of universities in North America where Irish is taught. “People from these backgrounds can reach quite impressive standards of Irish. The question of difficulty in learning the language comes from some Irish people who have their own attitudes towards the language,” Dr Walsh says. “Through preliminary work that we have done on the new speakers, we’ve found that they’re very committed, and will overcome the intricacies of another language and get to grips with it.

“It shows the importance of attitude. None of the new speakers talk about the fact that they’re struggling. They’re speaking Irish quite happily and want to get better. They often talk about it as if they’re on a journey and haven’t quite got there yet. “But any objective analysis would say that they’re very good already.” Some Irish are learning the language to move away from nationalism. They’re not speaking it for patriotism. “I think a certain generation associates nationalism and patriotism with political violence in the North. But, for a lot of young people, it’s all about being tolerant and open. They tend to be very accepting people, with liberal views towards the world. “They’re accepting of all sorts of diversity. The older generation that we’ve spoken to are much more nationalist. “They might have been at school in the 1940s and 1950s, when Irish was much more strongly associated with nationalism,” he says. With the new speakers of Irish come changes in the language. “We’ve definitely experienced all sorts of linguistic innovation across the spectrum. Nobody is replicating the traditional model. Researching language revival is part of this project.

“Irish is being brought into the future. Some people can be quite daring, almost transgressive, deliberately breaking rules and almost revelling in it. Other people are more conservative, as they try to stick to the style of the Gaeltacht areas,” Dr Walsh says. While purists may not like to see Irish changing, Walsh says that “one of the cardinal rules is that language changes.”

www.irishexaminer.com

Irish language efforts hard to sustain

December 18, 2013

Re Barry Walsh’s recent letter about the Irish language: many voluntary groups are working tirelessly to keep the cúpla focal bouyant, in a slowly ‘sinking’ ship, but are aware of how little funding is available ó Rialtas na hÉireann when they try to get a worthwhile project off the ground.

I refer to those of us grassroot promoters, and indeed Conradh na Gaeilge teams, who are also handicapped in affording us any form of reasonable funding. I think that our Gaeilge at home has lost ground as our native tongue since it be-came a recognised EU language.
Who could contradict me when we cannot provide finance to produce a 10-page weekly nuachtán, Foinse, for countrywide distribution to help us with material for our Ciorcal Chómhrá, or to read nuacht na seachtaine as Gaeilge?
I try ,without success to get nuachtan Gaeilge na Mumhan circulating, but alas it’s too costly. I am appalled at the revelation that such a vast amount of European taxpayers’ money is being spent on celebrating Gaeilge as an official EU language, while we see Ireland’s Gaeilge funding so diminished and almost as láthair.
Eilis Uí Bhriain
Caisleán Uí Liatháin
Co Chorcaí

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Will unofficial policy silence Irish forever?

December 17, 2013

The resignation of An Coimisinéir Teanga, Seán Ó Cuirreáin, adds to the growing suspicion that there is now an undeclared policy in operation to do away with what’s left of Irish in the public life of our country.
As someone who spent 30 years in the civil service,I know the deep dislike of Irish that is common among top civil servants. The days of Leon Ó Broin, TK Whitaker and Noel Dorr are long-passed. Our top officials will not openly express their dislike of Irish. Their tactic is to demean the language by ignoring it and marginalising those few who promote it. There was unanimous cross-party support for the Official Languages Act when it was going through the Dáil — proof that the legislation was positive sentiment about the Irish language and wouldn’t mean much in practice. Despite its limited scope, the Act conferred rights in legislative form for the first time. It provided cover for Irish speakers in pursuing their linguistic rights. But in the eyes of the mandarins, this was exactly what made it ‘a crank’s charter’ — to use a phrase popular in their circles at the time.

Without the active support of top management, the new legislation was doomedfrom the start. But what started as passive inaction in relation to it now seems to have moved up a notch or two to one of active undermining. It reminds me of a phrase used by President Michael D Higgins, when he was speaking at the biennial Tóstal na Gaeilge conference in Galway in 2010. He referred to those “for whom Irish was not half-dead enough.” Mr Ó Cuirreáin was appointed to his office by the President and will now be tendering his resignation to him in what are frustrating circumstances. As the courageous defender of minority rights that President Higgins has always been, and as the guardian of our constitution, I expect Uachtarán na hÉireann will have something to say about what appears to be the current, if undeclared, policy to undermine the standing of Irish in the public life of our country.

John Glennon
Hollywood
Co Wicklow

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Irish language law was ‘doomed from start’

December 17, 2013

John Glennon (Letters, Dec 16) referring to the Official Languages Act claims “Without the active support of top management, the new legislation was doomed from the start.”

The gap between aspiration and reality has never been greater in relation to the Irish language. While criticising Official Ireland, his own letter is written in English. We have a Constitutional declaration made in 1937: “The Irish language as the national language is the first official language.” 76 years later our Dáil and Seanad have translators in permanent attendance in parliament and committees in case our first official language is used. The cost of this service should be levied on the salary of each TD and senator. Or they could sign a declaration that they are proficient to conduct business “as Gaeilge” and we can reassign the translators.

The “people are sovereign” is a phrase often invoked to imply that we all share power and responsibility, so maybe it is time to recognise, with regard to Irish sadly or otherwise, the people have spoken and continue to speak through English. Apart from school, Irish had no relevance in my working or social life or my family. Still, we tick the box on the Census form.
T Murphy
Ballincollig
Co Cork

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