Luke Flanagan (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent)

Like me, Deputy Feighan would have a good understanding of how not to teach Irish. If one knows how not to teach it, then one at least has some idea of how to teach it. From the perspective of most people not having a clue about Irish, this was a good idea. The Deputy could have learned the language along with the public and we could have progressed together.

There is hope for the Irish language if it is approached in the right way. I think Des Bishop has done more for the Irish language than any politician. I do not say that to run down politicians. I have a few ideas on what could be done. I exchange texts with one of my friends solely in Irish. I do not have the náire or the embarrassment of making a fool of myself, as I might in spoken Irish, of getting it wrong and not communicating properly. There is a translation dictionary and before I reply to a text, I can get all the words perfectly. For the past year we have communicated like this and it works. Someone who did not know how to say "ní thuigim" in the Irish language can now communicate through text messaging. I suggest, perhaps for seachtain na Gaeilge, that people text in Irish for a whole week. Perhaps for one day of the year we could have a text-in-Irish day. That would make using Irish cool and trendy. It is something young people absolutely and utterly love doing. There is hope for the Irish language if we take the issue seriously. The way around the problem is to make it relevant and interesting for people and tie in technology. TG4 is a massive help. My daughters can watch cartoons in Irish. The language is relevant and real and that is how we will save it.

I hope the next generation of Members of the Oireachtas will not need headphones. I do not use them much of the time, even though I do not completely understand what people are saying, because that forces me into trying to understand them. If I used headphones, I would become lazy. Today as I had to understand everything that was being said, I wore them. I probably understood more, but I did not learn much about Irish by listening to the English translation.

There is hope for the Irish language and if we go down the right road, we can save it. We can be proud that we did not abandon or destroy it.

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