Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Tá beagán Gaeilge agam. I will speak in English. What Mr. Balance has said there last is what I was going to start off with. I have listened today and I have been educated on what is going on. It is coming back at me that there is a huge disjoint in what is happening. I understand what Fíbín is talking about on getting funding and that it has to go to different places trying to get the funding and there is no synchronisation of how this works. That is what I am getting: maybe I am totally wrong. We can all dwell on the fact that there is a lack of funding but what is becoming clear to me from listening to everyone speaking is that the joined up thinking is not there. I am from north County Galway where we have very few Irish speaking people. My mother was raised and brought up in a house in Belclare where Irish was a spoken language. She is still alive but the next generation is not speaking the language in north County Galway. We go back and ask what has gone wrong after 13 years having been spent teaching Irish in national and secondary school. The purpose of us being here is to try to see what we are doing with the Irish language, how we are progressing it, how we are growing the number of people speaking it and also how the arts and music that go with that are developing. When I listen today I say that we have a problem. The problem is that we have a lot of people who get funding, who do this, that and the other and I am finding, maybe I am totally wrong, that everybody is a little department in their own right and they are doing their job and somebody else is doing their job.

They are doing their job and somebody else is doing their job and I think that this is an issue where we have to peel back all of the layers and say, hold on a minute, what are we trying to achieve here? Can we all sit down around a table and can we come up with a consensus on how we are going to do that. There are good things and this is not all negative. This is Bliain na Gaeilge, and I had the honour of bringing up a young Comhaltas Ceoltóirí group from Belclare up to the Dáil. They are in existence about five years. They are growing every year because the teachers are involved and it is sexy to be playing an instrument, or to be doing Irish music, or doing sean-nós singing at the moment in Belclare national school.

The county Fleá Cheoil will be held in Tuam. It is a big thing for Tuam. It is bringing back all of this Irish music into Tuam which is a north Galway area. That is great. It is incredible how the amount of volunteers who are working on it - with no or very little funding - have taken this on. What needs to be done - and I am listening for the first time to all of these people speaking here - I think everybody has the enthusiasm and their heart in the right place, but what we need to do is to create a channel by which everybody is synchronised so that we get as much out of the money that is put in, and challenge the Government for more money, where it is needed. What will happen is Údarás na Gaeltachta will put in their pitch for their money during the year, every other group does the same thing, the Arts Council does the same thing, and they all have an agenda, which is to get as much as they can to provide their services. What is wrong is that for the Irish language, we have to create a common application. It does not matter if it is the Arts Council or Údarás na Gaeltachta or whoever gets the money as long as it is given for the right purposes.

I hear with interest what the witnesses are saying about the infrastructure has being left sitting for ten years and that €10 million was needed to address this. That would be a very small price to pay to get the infrastructure right so that we have the places.

One other matter mentioned by Mr. Ó Tuairisc, and coming from Galway I understand this, I was at a play in Tuam in the theatre last Sunday night. There were 70 people in the audience. It was put on the night before that and in all they probably had 200 people who came in to see that play. Those are the sort of numbers who attend and it was a great night of entertainment. That is good but in rural areas these are the kind of numbers who will be in attendance. One needs therefore to rationalise funding, not just in terms of what one is doing but being mindful of the cost of doing it in rural areas and transporting it from Donegal to Galway, or down to Kerry or wherever to smaller audiences where one does not get the throughput. It is most important to support these drama groups in tipping the scales a little bit more the other way.

There is a lot of work to do but I am very heartened by the fact that there are so many people who are involved in developing the Irish language. I wish all those involved well and it is alright talking about the lack of funding etc. We all know that. We all know we have had a recession. Everybody, no matter what sphere of life they are in, has been subject to cutbacks. Some of the figures are startling. What we need to do is together, to grow it again, and it will grow over time.