Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael)
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I love to hear people speaking in their native tongue, that is, in Irish. Unfortunately I am not one of them. I have not got an ounce of Irish. I will explain why later. This debate is about the love of the language. The language that is spoken in the home is the language people mostly tune into, especially when they are young. I am always amazed at the cultural mix of people in this country. When I go into the local school in my area, I see children from different countries who are able to speak the Irish language and probably better than our native children.

I left school at 14 years of age. The only reason I left was I could not pass the junior certificate Irish exam. If a person did not pass Irish then, for God's sake, he or she would have to forget about it. A person could have been excellent at everything else but when he or she did not get over the Irish language barrier, that person was told sorry. This happened to many people living in Dublin. I do not know if that scenario was prevalent down the country but in Dublin, particularly people who came from a social and economic background that was poorer, where the main priority of the teacher was to teach the students English, maths and religion, everything else went out the window. That is a fact.

I do not speak Irish. I would love to but unfortunately I was not given that gift. I can do other little things of which I am very proud. I do not blame my parents at all. When a person is rearing a family where the language is not spoken it is very different. We need to cop onto that as well.

We have one Irish school in our area and rather than lose my seat saying anything really bad about local Irish schools and going down the dark road, I will just say that last year I had a young girl who called into me at my clinic. She was in an awful state and breaking her heart crying. She had tried to get her five year old child into the local Irish school and she was told there was no room even though her child had gone to the Irish playschool not far from me. There was no room in the inn for her. This mother was told the grounds for the refusal at the interview. It was because she was not able to speak Irish herself and because there were other people in the school who had family members, cousins, nieces and nephews who wanted a place. Even though some of them are being bussed from where they live, they still got in. The child who lived a minute and a half across the road did not get in. I could not understand that. I thought it was really dreadful. Without going down the road of bashing Irish schools, which I do not want to do, there are schools which cherry pick children. I know that for a fact. I live in a socially deprived area where young people, particularly young children who have not had various opportunities in life, are being turned away because their parents were not able to sit an interview in Irish. That is rubbish and nonsense.

My daughter wanted to go to the Gaeltacht. I remember going to a particular hotel in the area for the interview. We all had to turn up. She was the only one of 12 who did not get to go to the Gaeltacht yet she is the only one out of the 12 that can still speak Irish. She would have loved to go to the Gaeltacht but she was turned down. That has been very relevant in her life for a long time. I am not knocking Irish schools. They are a great asset to communities. However, where children are living locally and their parents have not got the natural abilities to speak Irish but they want their children to go the local Irish school and participate in the Irish language, it is sad that parents have to go and do an interview in Irish and if they cannot sit that interview their child is deprived. That is a real issue for me.