Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)

I dealt with funding and housing to some degree in the introduction, so I might now deal with education and language rights, which are the other two features of the protest and the demands of the movement. The striking thing in education is the mismatch between parents' aspirations and wishes and the reality of school availability. Almost one in four parents say that if they had the option in their local community of sending their children to an Irish-medium school, they would do so. The previous Government pledged to work towards doubling the number of pupils attending Irish-medium education, but the numbers actually fell by 3%. More parents than ever are saying they would like to send their children to Irish-medium education, and the numbers are falling. Only 6% of pupils receive education through Irish. This in contrast to Wales. The more I learn about the struggle for the Irish language today, the more I see that Wales is a consistent example of how things should be done. In Wales, currently 23% of children go to school through Welsh and there is a plan that 40% will by 2050. It is a clear, ambitious and measurable goal. What we need from the Government is a similar target, to have an ambitious target - for example 20% over a period of 20 years - and then provide for that with funding and legislation. Similarly, there are 50,000 children in secondary school who are exempt from learning Irish and there is no plan whatsoever to address that.

We have a national plan for Irish language public services, which was published in 2024, but we have no plan for its implementation. When will the action plan to implement that be published? Will it include such things as the Common European Framework of Reference, CEFR, being implemented in the education system, Irish language courses aligned with the CEFR, increasing the number of third level courses through Irish from less than 1% to 5%, the establishment of a scheme to provide Irish language courses aligned with that and increasing the provision of education, which I spoke about?

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