Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Conradh na Gaeilge, which will be celebrating its heritage in the coming years, has stated that it has asked for a meeting with the Minister and, so far, it has been refused a meeting. I received a reply to a parliamentary question which states that the Minister has only met two Gaeltacht organisations since coming to office. One of those was a meeting with Údarás na Gaeltachta and the other was a drop-in event with Conradh na Gaeilge in Buswells Hotel.

I was in Gaoth Dobhair a couple of weeks ago and met with a comhar cumann there and I also met with a comhar cumann in Corca Dhuibhne in the west Kerry Gaeltacht. They could outline to the Minister in 15 minutes the infrastructure of the language networks that exist in the Gaeltacht. They could very quickly tell her where policy could be changed and where the funding that would make all the difference could be focused.

We mentioned, in the previous debate, the issues relating to the Irish language plans for the Gaeltacht. The former Minister of State, Dinny McGinley, told us this was going to be the saviour of the language in the Gaeltacht. Yet, after the massive amount of work they have done on the matter, the relevant people in the Gaeltacht are telling me that they are so depressed by the Government's devaluing of their work, they are willing to throw the plans in question into the bin. I am not exaggerating. They are so disappointed by the effort on the part of and level of funding provided by the Government in respect of these language plans that they are demotivated from taking the plans any further.

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