Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 248:

In page 78, between lines 34 and 35, to insert the following:

“(iv) any relevant language plans agreed in accordance with the Gaeltacht Act 2012 for a Gaeltacht Language Planning Area, Gaeltacht Service Town or Irish Language Network relevant to the area of the regional spatial and economic strategy,”.

I heard the Minister saying that it was not appropriate to insert "Gaeltacht" or these in similar provisions in the regional section and that it would suffice at a later stage where you are talking about the various different plans, whether the urban, the priority or the co-ordinated area plans. As I explained, the Gaeltacht region is a region and it is quite appropriate to ensure that when there is a review of the regional spatial and economic strategy, we ensure that this is cognisant. The amendments follow from that and I will not delay proceedings.

Amendment No. 248 is to ensure that in carrying out a review, a regional assembly shall ensure that the strategy is materially cognisant with the relevant language plans. I explained that previously. Subsection (3)(b) here takes account of those language plans.

In each case, it is appropriate. There is a number of others. It is to try to ensure that when putting together plans and when reviewing those plans, there is in the back of everybody's mind, because it is specifically laid out here, a need to be cognisant of planning around language where it is relevant.

It is a regional plan and there is not a Gaeltacht area in every county. There is not a Gaeltacht area, for instance, in the whole of the midlands and there are two such regions in County Meath. The rest are nearly all confined to what they now call the Wild Atlantic Way but, before that, it did not need to be called that. People knew it, if they did, because it was mainly a Gaeltacht region and over time that shrank to what we have now so that there are pockets that are not within the designated Gaeltacht area. Then you have An Rinn in Waterford obviously not on the Atlantic, as in the Wild Atlantic Way, but it is still in the Atlantic. That is the reason. We are trying to ensure not that there is a separate spatial strategy but that at the very least in those strategies that are published, we at least ensure that those who are in the first instance drawing them up and in the second instance, where there are regional assemblies, have to take account of those when reviewing those strategies.

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