Dr. Teresa Lynn:

Níl. I did not want to mention names but that is effectively the problem. I agree about the outsider’s perspective and the example of Lidl. I did my PhD in Australia. It was a co-PhD between Australia and DCU. It was only because I was in Australia that I felt I had the right – bhí cead agam – or the ability to do this work on the Irish language. I needed the outsider perspective and not to be bogged down in the story of who I needed permission from or whose support I might need. I did not need it. I did it self-funded. You need to have the outside perspective because there is a lot of being bogged down in the rhetoric around the Irish language. In DCU we built a language model. I am not sure if the Deputy is familiar with language models like ChatGPT but we built a language model for Irish last year. On the team we had Irish speakers and a couple of Irish computational linguists but we also had a German guy and the main lead was an Irish guy who did not speak Irish. Their input was just as valuable as everybody else’s. We also have a PhD student in DCU - he could be with the Adapt Centre; I am not sure - who is building a computer-aided language learning system for Irish. He is Chinese. He did not really speak Irish but he is able to do this work and has the willingness to do it. We need to be a little more open to the possibilities around bringing in the international perspective and learning from Irish and international colleagues, like Professor Ó Duibhir said, in the Basque Country, Wales and other places where smaller languages are supported better with technology.