Mr. Aodán Mac Póilín:

Go raibh míle maith agat as ucht an cuireadh go teacht seo.

I will give the committee some background information first. For the last 23 years I have been the director of the Ultach Trust, a cross-community Irish language organisation based in Belfast. I live in the Shaw's Road Gaeltacht in Belfast and am a former chairman of the first Irish-medium school in Northern Ireland and of Comhairle na Gaelscolaíochta. I spent eight years as a board member of Foras na Gaeilge. I will briefly mention five topics, some of which have been dealt with in great detail in the draft report that has been circulated to the committee. The members probably have not read it because it is a big beast of a thing. I will summarise the points made.

My organisation believes that the draft Irish language strategy published last year by the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure has not given due attention to the cross-community imperative identified in the Northern Ireland programme for government, which is focused on reconciliation. This imperative is also implicit in the Good Friday Agreement's commitment to promoting respect, understanding and tolerance regarding linguistic diversity, in which Irish and Ulster-Scots are specifically mentioned. There is a great deal in our report on that.

No matter how desirable it might be to have an effective Irish language Act and no matter how strong the case for it is or what shape an effective language Act could or should have, we believe there is little prospect of a language Act in the short to medium term given the political configuration in Northern Ireland. In other words, if it is not passed in Westminster, it will not be passed. We are working on the assumption that Westminster does not want to do it.

Third, we believe that the draft Irish language strategy, which is an enormously important step towards supporting the language, depends too much on the language Act we will not get and also depends too much on the model of the 20-Year Strategy for the Irish Language 2010-2030 in the South, which was designed for a society in which the constitutional, legal, social, political,

These statements may be a bit bald, but the sometimes complex analysis behind them can be found in the report. It is still in draft form but I hope to have the final form available by the end of next week. I will send a copy to the members.

There are two other topics I wish to cover very quickly. The first is the future of the Irish language broadcasting fund. My organisation campaigned for this fund for 13 years. It was finally established in 2003-04 and is worth £3 million per annum. It is one of the most important support infrastructures for the Irish language in Northern Ireland.