Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I am one of those people who went through the education system when Irish was compulsory and I passed examinations. However, I cannot speak Irish and can just about follow a conversation in it. I have a few words of Irish, but that is the extent of it. However, I have a commitment to the Irish language which, as I have said previously in the House, I show by the fact that my children attended an all-Irish school in the days when the Gaelscoileanna movement was almost frontier territory. There was very unsatisfactory accommodation available and the movement was in the early stages of development. I have a commitment and a desire to see the language revived and people like me need to be catered for. There are actually a lot of people who would put themselves in that category.

One item is absent from this Chamber and I do not know if anyone has it in front of him or her. Most of those who have spoken spoke in Irish. There is a translator in the booth translating, yet none of us has earphones. That is a very obvious shortcoming. Increasingly, we hear people speak in Irish, which is fine as long as those who do not speak the language have the means to understand what they are saying, certainly if it is a long speech.

I turn to the revival of the language. I have seen at first hand the phenomenal revival of the language within my constituency which is outside a Gaeltacht area. There are six or seven primary schools, as well as a second level school in Lucan which was developed on a regional basis for north Kildare. It has been so successful that it is oversubscribed, with the result that now there is nowhere for students in north Kildare to go. They are being asked to go somewhere which is less satisfactory. Total immersion is very different from the likes of a sruth or an aonad, which does not seem to be understood. It appears that one has to re-establish a demand in an area for an Irish school, even though there has been such a demand since the 1980s. The school in Lucan would not have been developed if there been no demand in north Kildare and west Dublin. There are 6th class pupils from six or seven feeder schools in north Kildare and areas such as Edenderry and Dunboyne. When my children went to Gaelscoil Uí Dhálaigh in Leixlip, we fought every inch of the way to have the school established. The accommodation was what other people had finished with. Essentially, there was no big demand for revival and it had to be fought for.

I am seeing the exact same thing happen in the provision of Gaelscoileanna at second level. There is a need for co-ordination between the Departments involved. To be honest, I am not at all happy that we have this miscellaneous Department of Regional Development, Rural Affairs, Arts and the Gaeltacht. With a lot of portfolios, it lacks focus. The Irish language is within a context which is our culture. The aspects of arts and heritage are being dumbed down.

I am not at all surprised there is a big resistance to that, as we speak. The Irish language exists within that culture and that culture needs to be nurtured. It is very interesting that the Taoiseach was at an event yesterday in America, where there is a greater appreciation of our culture, by the look of it, than we ourselves might have. I believe that needs to be revisited as a matter of urgency.

The Gaeltacht needs special attention. These are very special areas and it is not just a question of the language on its own. We must consider the needs of people living in those areas in a complete way, because this goes from language to commerce to culture and to every particular element of life. However, any big revival is going to come from outside the Gaeltacht areas. There needs to be a degree of co-ordination so there is not a resistance, where there is a proven demand, to giving expression to that demand, for example, through the Department of Education and Skills.

There is a very exercised community in my constituency, one I am very happy to lend support because I believe it is being very badly treated in terms of the development of and commitment to a second level school, given the school in west Dublin is over-subscribed. The reality is that some of these primary schools have existed since the 1980s and 1990s; they are established schools, with some being two-stream schools and one a three-stream school. They are incredibly well appreciated and it is understood there is an educational value in bilingualism, in that it is possible for people to become multilingual much more easily if they are bilingual in the first place. People often ask about the economic advantage of learning Irish whereas we do not dismiss the economic advantage of learning many other languages. If Irish is a benefit to our learning of other languages, given the prospect of multilingualism, we have to see it in those terms.

There can sometimes be a bit of elitism among people who almost believe that if others do not speak Irish, they are not the real thing. We have to cut that out. If there is to be a revival we have to provide opportunities for people to speak Irish, even if it is in less than perfect patterns. This includes providing opportunities outside the classroom environment because while people might learn Irish in the classroom, if they do not have the opportunity to speak it outside that environment, they will lose the language. We have to look in a more nuanced way at how we provide for this.

There needs to be a strong connection with the Department of Education and Skills in terms of co-ordinating the development of the language. If this stops at second level, we are hardly going to achieve what we all want to see achieved.

There are other issues in regard to the whole area of the culture within which the language exists. For example, many of us watched the excellent programme that RTE broadcast at the time of the commemorations, which was greatly appreciated. At the same time, the playlists of Irish music contain less and less of what people really appreciated when they saw it in a programme because these things are always developed on the basis of commercial value. I believe we need to look at this in its totality because if people appreciate the context, they will appreciate the language. Those aspects need to be considered if we are to have a more complete revival.

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