Pat Carey (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)

The main recommendations were that the scheme would be applicable to new households from the time the first child is born - the main criticism of the scheme is that it only comes into operation when the first child in the family starts attending school, which is too late in terms of language acquisition; support services for learning or improving the Irish language would be available to households; an agreement or understanding would be made between the Department and household regarding the promotion of the language; and the grant would be increased.

I tend to concur with Deputy McGinley. The environment for supporting the Irish language has changed. Having met representatives of parents with young children from inside and outside the Gaeltacht who are anxious to raise their families through the medium of Irish, I consider that it should be possible to support families when children are at an early age. The problem with some of the schemes in place is that they kick in too late. By the time a child is four or five years old and of school-going age, he or she will have missed critical opportunities to acquire language skills. There is considerable merit in working with pre-school children at Naoínraí and their parents to conserve and promote the Irish language.

As some Deputies will know better than I do, a number of initiatives are under way, for example, in Indreabhán and elsewhere in Connemara and in the west Kerry Gaeltacht, to deliver significant inter-agency support to families. This includes support from the Health Service Executive, an agency that is not often spoken about positively, which is providing speech and language therapy services as Gaeilge in a family resource centre. We should examine other ways of supporting the language, although I do not exclude supports that are currently available.

See this speech in context