Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party)

Like Deputy Flanagan, I came through our education system - eight years in primary school, secondary school and university - without a word of Irish and I, too, am amazed by the number of Deputies who can speak Irish because it is not a common trait among the rest of the working population in a similar age category. We face a crisis here because all of us, as citizens and Irish people, would like to participate and have an opportunity to debate how we can take steps to preserve the Irish language and promote it among those who do not have the benefit of it. We are the products of a system where Irish is compulsory in school and yet most people cannot speak it, or do not use it in a living sense, once they leave school. As has been said, many people end up hating Irish. Are there steps we can take to improve that situation? That is certainly a debate worth having.

Given that this Bill is the product of much consultation in Gaeltacht areas - in some cases, research of more than 12 years - it is wrong that we would try to condense this debate into the last week before the summer recess. It is not an appropriate way to deal with it because there is a contradiction here. On the one hand, we have surveys which show there is a reduction in the number of people speaking Irish as a main language but, on the other, there is a huge interest in terms of the explosion in the number of gaelscoileanna and so on. How do we marry the objectives of preservation on the one hand and of promotion on the other against a backdrop of limited resources and trying to maximise the use of resources? People better qualified than me have said they believe the Bill, as it stands, will not achieve that and will probably fail native Irish speakers and will not really do enough to preserve Irish and keep it alive as a community language. A number of individuals have said the issue of language equality needs to be examined and that is the way we should look at it.

I refer to a number of definitions in the Bill, including Gaeltacht language planning areas, Gaeltacht service towns, Irish language networks and so on. There is a belief that these definitions are not really binding and that they have been kept a little open. Words like "may" are used in the Bill and they do not take into account definite criteria, such as the number of Irish speakers in an area. There is a belief among some that the Bill is based too much on ministerial discretion rather than on actual data which have been collected in regard to the number of Irish speakers. If we are talking about preserving Irish speaking communities, we need the State to speak the language of those people but it does not do so to a great extent. That really means more definitively identifying Irish speaking areas using proper reliable linguistic data and then providing those communities with the information and services from the State in Irish. That does not really exist. Local people should be able to do their taxes, deal with their social welfare, go to hospital, deal with the gardaí and so on in Irish - in their native language. The Bill does not really provide for that.

As Deputy Healy said, part of the problem which has been identified is the official boundaries of Gaeltacht areas linking up with the Government order of 1956. It does not accurately reflect the current linguistic situation and that needs to be addressed. There were good articles in the newspapers today which showed the anomalies as a result of growth in towns like Galway and areas being categorised as Gaeltacht areas in which people do not speak Irish. Proper Gaeltacht boundaries would save the Government money and would allow resources to be directed to the areas which need the language to be preserved.

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