Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)

Go raibh maith ag an Teachta. Mar is eol dó, is grúpa eolais é Gaois i bhFiontar agus Scoil na Gaeilge in Ollscoil Chathair Bhaile Átha Cliath. It comprises lecturers, researchers and postgraduate students. Gaois has received funding from my Department since 2027. I visited DCU just last month to see the great work it is doing. I was delighted to announce just over €4 million for Gaois for the next four years to help to significantly develop its major projects.

The projects developed by Gaois are research and reference resources of an exceptionally high standard, which provide a comprehensive facility to the Irish-language community focused on the development of innovative resources to sustain the language and the learning of Irish. Students, teachers, journalists, translators and the wider public can, depending on their areas of research, easily access the contents through searching some of the following sites: dúchas.ie, which entails digitisation of the Irish folklore collection; logainm.ie, the Irish placenames database; corpas.ie, the national corpus of the Irish language, which includes both written and oral material; canúint.ie, a repository of Irish dialects; and ainm.ie, the national database of Irish-language biographies. The sites will be of interest not only to ourselves but also to daoine i ngach chuid den domhan a bhfuil suim acu sa Ghaeilge agus i stair agus cultúr an oileáin freisin.

I am very conscious that the funding my Department is providing will enable Gaois to develop greater integration between the sites, provide more powerful search facilities and ensure a structured supply of information in a measured way to artificial intelligence models.

Additionally, it will advance the Gaois working groups, develop the next generation of technicians and researchers, and sustain the resources' userbase. Previous projects undertaken by Gaois with the assistance of funding received from my Department include the LEX Project, which has provided terminology support for the EU institutions from 2008 onwards, and an líonra saineolaithe a bhí forbartha with the aim of providing high-quality technical advice to Irish-language translators and terminologists in the European institutions. I look forward to continuing work with Gaois sna blianta atá romhainn.

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