Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

The best thing is to let the Cabinet committee deal with the linguistic study. Since 1997, many things have been done to promote the Irish language in the Gaeltacht. Údarás na Gaeltachta now commits a fixed percentage of its capital to language based industries. It was also given much funding for the promotion of the Irish language, especially for youth clubs and so on. We have invested a huge amount of money in facilities in the Gaeltacht, which are very important for activities there and for the Irish colleges. We set up the campaí samhradh trí Ghaeilge. With the cúntóirí teanga, we put native Irish speakers into schools to assist children whose Irish is not fluent. The cuairteoirí baile scheme is operating on a pilot basis and the idea is to support parents in language issues from the time their children are born. We operate a scheme to coach children in sports through Irish. The growth of language-based industry in the Gaeltacht was well highlighted by Údarás na Gaeltachta in the awards ceremony on TG4 last Sunday. Many things are happening and we will do more next year, pending the work of the Cabinet sub-committee.

We are already involved in language planning in a number of communities, which is a big part of the linguistic study of the Gaeltacht.

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