Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Tá fáilte roimh an Aire sa Teach. Sadly, I am one of those people who does not have a fluency in the Irish language but that does not in any way mean I do not have the respect, love and ambition to some day be fluent or at least have a couple of words as Gaeilge. I always had an admiration and love for the language but that was compounded by a former colleague of ours in this House, a great person, former Senator Trevor Ó Clochartaigh from Connemara. He grew up in London and moved to Connemara in his teenage years. He had the most beautiful Irish and it was a joy and a pleasure to sit here for seven years and listen to former Senator Ó Clochartaigh's bilingual tones and the manner in which he delivered his speeches. I used periodically to go for coffee with him in the coffee dock in the days when we could do those things and we would be ag caint a little bit. It was something that did not continue but I know the Houses of the Oireachtas are doing their best to try to improve the Irish language and the spoken word in this House. More could be done. If Members and staff wished to have private tuition, that should be facilitated because it is incredibly important we have the ambition in this House to use Irish.

I am a product of a traditional way of teaching in the schools. Some people were fortunate enough to embrace Irish and learn. Sadly, I was one of those who did not do so and I regretted I did not do so. I would certainly like to have done so. We have seen the evolution of Gaelscoileanna throughout the country. They are wonderful because they are teaching people through the native tongue and teaching young people to love the language in a different way than it would have been done 30 or 40 years ago when the likes of me would have been going to school. The support and funding provided to Gaelscoileanna is right and appropriate but I would like to see as many schools as possible at least embracing the ethos of Gaelscoileanna, and perhaps even a hybrid approach could be taken whereby some classes would be taught completely as Gaeilge and others possibly not.

There is so much more we can do to promote the language. Why should we not do that work? We should do so because it is what distinguishes us, the same way as our traditional Irish music, culture, and dancing are all wonderful parts of us as Irish people and what we are.The most important element of that, what knits it all together and what makes us truly unique and beautiful as a nation and a people, is our Irish. I embrace Seachtain na Gaeilge and what it is trying to achieve by making Irish more accessible and more used by the general population. Hopefully, as the years go by we will see more and more people at least attempting to converse as Gaeilge. It is a healthy and useful debate and we should not just have it once a year. We should be discussing this at least twice and maybe three times a year.