Irish language ‘being driven to margins of society’, commissioner asserts
January 24, 2014
Seán Ó Cuirreáin: “Language rights are permanent rights.”
Irish Language Commissioner Seán Ó Cuirreáin has said the language is being continuously driven to the margins of Irish society in a process accelerated by the inaction of Government, the civil service and the public sector.
Mr Ó Cuirreáin announced late last year that he would be stepping down from his position as Coimisinéir Teanga in February because of Government and public service inaction in preserving and promoting the language.
He used his last appearance yesterday before the Oireachtas sub-committee on the 20-year strategy for the Irish language to roundly condemn of the State and Government’s attitude.
Mr Ó Cuirreáin said he believed there was “no possibility” that a new system to increase the number of civil servants fluent in Irish would succeed.He said he had calculated that the scheme would take some 28 years to increase the number of fluent speakers in a core Government department for Irish to just 3 per cent from its present rate of 1. 5 per cent.
‘No importance’
Nobody knew if it was being implemented, because its progress was measured by self-assessment, and “no importance” could be attached to this, he said.
He gave as an example a claim by the Revenue Commissioners that a third of their press releases were being issued in two languages. But when his office checked, it emerged that they were being issued in only one.
Then, once a year, it was getting four months’ worth of press releases translated in one go.
While acknowledging that some progress had been made in the 10 years since the enactment of the Official Languages Act, Mr O Cuirreáin pointed to the fact that 10 of the 16 Irish language officers nominated to implement the Act across Government departments do not speak Irish themselves.
He said the State had two simple choices – to look back at Irish as our lost language, or forward with it as a core part of our heritage and sovereignty.
“It is with heavy hearts that the people of the Gaeltacht and the Irish-speaking community in general will approach the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising in two years’ time if our national language is to be merely a symbolic language … that is pushed aside, marginalised and left in the halfpenny place in the life of this nation,” he said.
“The support required for the Irish language within this country’s public service should not and could not be viewed as an optional extra,” he said.
“Language rights are permanent rights; they are not concessions or privileges granted at times of prosperity.”
No TD or Senator from either Government party attended the meeting.
Irish Times
