David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)

Why does the Minister not do something about this? Why does he not stop the nonsense of promoting appalling elitism in second levels where youngsters are force fed turgid literature before they can speak the language and have fun using it? Until the Minister does that he is wasting his time and his money. When he replies to the House shortly will he not undertake to speak to the other Ministers in Government about changing the system before it is too late? The language is dying. I see from the Government statement that almost 1.6 million people in the Republic can speak Irish. That is rubbish. If one walks down a street in any city in this country, except perhaps Galway, one finds nobody speaking Irish. They are speaking Chinese, Polish and English, but they are not speaking Irish, apart from the odd one here and there. The emperor has no clothes in this. If the Minister believes that 1.6 million people can speak Irish we are all in serious trouble because this is not the case. It is not my experience. The first thing that must happen is that next year all those turgid textbooks at secondary and primary levels should be dumped and young people encouraged to speak as Gaeilge and have fun in the classroom. There should be Irish dancing, céilithe, and this methodology could be introduced bilingually. There can be cúpla focail as Gaeilge and cúpla focail as Béarla, but they must have fun, and that is not happening. Students are suffering, they hate the system and that is why it is not working.

Everyone points to the success of the gaelscoileanna, and the Minister is right there, because at that level the children are speaking and having fun in Irish and soaking up the language. As the Minister and any linguist knows, at that level children learn languages naturally, so they grow up with the language and it is second nature to them. However, if that has not happened and a child is presented at the junior certificate stage with some of today's Irish textbooks and told he or she must know everything they contain, and be able to write essays before they can even speak it, that is a disaster. I do not know whether the Government intends to keep on fooling itself with this type of press release. It states that 1.6 million in the Republic speak Irish and 92% of those surveyed maintain that promoting the language is important.

This is an important issue. I have brought youngsters to other countries on school tours. The first thing they did when they landed, very often, was to speak Irish among themselves, however little they had. I have another anecdote for the Minister, as well, which I believe he will enjoy. In a school I am familiar with there is a high percentage of children from Poland. They are lovely people. They talk to each other in Polish in the playground. I met one little boy recently who told me that if they continued to talk in Polish, he and his friends would speak to each other in Irish. There is an element of that as well, so we have got to change the way Irish is being taught.

I shall probably get lambasted by what I call the Irish Taliban for saying this today. However, I want to focus on the elitism surrounding Irish, the idea, perhaps, that somebody who speaks the language fluently is somehow more Irish than someone who does not. That is something I want nailed because it is wrong. It is not my fault that I cannot speak Irish fluently, because I did not get the opportunity to do so in school. As I said at the start, when I was at school the way to teach Irish was to physically beat it in. I recall being held back in primary school one evening until six o'clock to learn the "Hail Holy Queen" as Gaeilge, such was the thinking in the 1960s. That type of attitude turned a great many people against Irish at that time. It was linked to the national question, with which, again, I believe there is an issue. However, that is now changing, and rightly so.

We need a modern syllabus in Irish, but it must first focus on the verbal. That is the main point. Most people in this country would love to be able to speak Irish. TG4 has gone a long way in this regard, but it has a great many programmes in English, so I wonder how much it is promoting the Irish language.

I come from an area in east Cork, which the Minister might have heard of, Knockadoon and Ballymacoda. My grandfather was a fluent Irish speaker and that area was a Gaeltacht. There is one person, extant, from that area of east Cork who is a native Irish speaker. There were poets and other literati from that area. However, in one generation the language was lost in that part of the country. My father told me that when my grandfather was at school Irish language usage was greatly discouraged. People who left Ireland at that time could not speak English and were at a disadvantage in the United States and elsewhere. Also, there was a certain shame if somebody could not speak English, but only Irish. That is to go way back.

However, we really need to get our thinking straight in this regard. Other contributors have raised the placenames issue. I am sorry to say this, but again, there is something in the psyche as regards the language being driven down one's throat. The Minister must have a care in that regard because people resist and resent that. Irish needs to be encouraged, positively, and to get back to the schools, it needs to be fun, linking in with the wider culture of the country in terms of music and dance. We are so rich in that area.

Unless an enormous change is made quickly in the way Irish is approached in schools — and it is not the teachers' fault, they just do what is laid down — the language will die. No amount of legislation, name changes for towns etc. will alter that. If that happens, it will be regrettable. I shall be interested in the Minister's contribution when he sums up. It is urgent that this change is made, that he forgets about the textbook approach and gets young people to speak the language before they are forced to deal with turgid grammar, which even the Minister believes is appalling.

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