Dr. Ríona Ní Fhrighil:

As Ms Ní Ghréacháin remarked, I speak on behalf of the 3% of parents who are raising their children through Irish. This means that 97% of the children in Gaelscoileanna do not come from that background. I will put on my professional as opposed to my parental hat. As a linguist, the 3% group is crucial because these children allow all boats to rise, so to speak. They are a linguistic resource who, in some cases, are more important than the teachers because they model the language for their peers. Essentially, having a child like my son who speaks Irish when he cries in his sleep benefits other children because he models what a four, five or six year old says. This is also very important socially because these children tend to encourage those who do not speak Irish at home to socialise through the language. That is what we want, namely, balanced bilingual children.

While I do not wish to be too technical, I will outline a differentiation made. For children who speak a global language such as English at home, learning another language can only benefit them and strengthen their home language. That is exactly what is being spoken about, namely, access to another language opening doors, which is known as additive bilingualism. If a child who speaks a minoritised language, for example, Irish or Welsh, receives his or her education through the medium of a majority language, he or she will not receive sufficient input in his or her home minoritised language. What happens in such circumstances is that the child's core competencies in his or her first language recede. This is known as subtractive bilingualism. For this reason, we all want additive bilingualism and the way to achieve this is to ensure children who have Irish as their first language at home are in school alongside those who have Irish as a second or third language.

As a group, we are seeking positive discrimination for native Irish speakers outside the Gaeltacht. We do not mind positive discrimination for any other minority either because our commitment is to diversity. Inevitably, linguistic, religious and ethnic diversity are all intertwined. We welcome children for whom English is not the language of the home because it normalises our children's multilingualism. This means that they do not come home from school and complain to their parents that they are the only children who do not speak English at home. Diversity is, therefore, very positive for us. However, we must ensure the indigenous linguistic minority is protected, as happens all over the world.