Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

From what Ms Phelan has said, even though there is a legal obligation in relation to Irish within the designated Gaeltacht areas under the 1956 Act and all the Acts up to 2010, no special consideration was given - as it would have been in the county - for the part of the city that is designated a Gaeltacht. If the conclusion was that there is no difference there, perhaps the council should have considered looking to get rid of that status because it is a total nonsense, to seek a status as a bilingual city on a statutory basis and to have a more honest debate about the real situation of Irish in the city. It seems to me that in drawing up the plan, there was an absolute legal obligation to examine the Gaeltacht area within the city and to draw up appropriate plans accordingly. If that was not possible or feasible, the council should have said to the Department that it was not possible and that it needed to be looked at in an holistic way. We need a totally different type of legislation to make what is to me just an honorary title of "bilingual city" into something real and meaningful that actually delivers for the Irish language.