Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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I will speak in English. How can you call your city bilingual when it only has 2%? I wish to come back to the point I made at the beginning of the meeting. The council seems to be confining itself to a planning authority. It is more than that. It is the prime development body of the city, the prime development body of my regional capital and the prime development body of the principal city in our Gaeltacht region. Surely that 2% figure should drive you on to increase that figure, to do an awful lot more, to be far more ambitious, to be willing to push the boundaries and to make us push the boundaries to give you a bilingual city and thereby lead the way for other cities. Deputy Ó Cuív referred to other cities. Let us look at the work going on in Clondalkin in south Dublin. They are hungry to develop an Irish speaking culture within their community. Maybe I am getting it wrong - perhaps it is due to these horrible Zoom meetings or whatever you call them - but I am not getting any sense of ambition from you guys. I know it is there, but I do not get it. I look at the screen and I see heads shaking. We need the council, as the lead development and planning authority, to challenge us to do more as a legislature to encourage the Gaeltacht, and not to be afraid to encouraging it. I know it is a multicultural city - I get that - but a unique part of Galway is our Irish-language part of the city. I am not hearing from the witnesses that they are ambitious or hungry enough to do more to develop that.

Perhaps I am wrong, but I just do not get it from our witnesses. I am in and out of Galway a great deal. I see it on the streets and in all of the bodies our witnesses have mentioned: Gaillimh le Gaeilge, An Taibhdhearc agus gach rud mar sin, but I am just not getting it here today.

Perhaps after the meeting our witnesses can put their position in writing to us. As I said earlier, if our city council witnesses were the Ministers for the Environment, Climate and Communications or for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, what would they do?