'Ribe ribe, róibéis, tabhair dom greim ar bharr do shlata bige, agus tabharfaidh mé duit arís amárach é', writes Lorna Siggins.
(Give me a grip of the top of your rod, little shrimp, and I'll return it to you tomorrow)
The Connemara children's rhyme recorded by author Séamus Mac an Iomaire may be full of guile, but the 44 candidates in tomorrow's Údarás na Gaeltachta elections may need a little more than that to tempt the electorate. The posters are up, the canvassers are out - but does the 25-year-old Gaeltacht development agency have any relevance now for its seven constituencies? Does it have any credibility, after a series of controversial decisions by its outgoing board?
Last November, the agency had to issue a public apology to a former Fianna Fáil councillor and Connemara businessman, Nioclás Ó Conchúbhair, over its treatment of him in a property sale. Ó Conchúbhair was part of a consortium which put in a bid for a holiday village in west Connemara. The bid of €1.45 million was accepted in February, 2004, but it emerged that the authority's board had bypassed two higher bids, including one from Gael Linn, and ignored the advice of its own executive when accepting the local consortium's offer. The tender had to be abandoned, a new bid by a London-based businessman was accepted, and the agency apologised to Ó Conchúbhair, saying he and his partners had abided fully by the rules of the procedure.
Last September, this newspaper reported that the agency had provided grant aid in December 1998 of nearly €70,000 to a quarry near Moycullen, Co Galway - officially a Gaeltacht area. The quarry, which had no planning permission as it pre-dated legislation of 1963, was not within the Gaeltacht boundaries. The Gaeltacht agency said that the error was an "innocuous" administrative one, and this has been accepted by the Comptroller and Auditor General.
Then there was the trouble of June 2001, when the agency became aware that it had grant-aided two companies backed by a one-time Swedish bankrupt, Dick Hoglund, who had been convicted of tax fraud. He was a director of and shareholder in Primary Holdings, a company behind two projects earmarked for the Donegal Gaeltacht with the promise of 80 jobs. The news came in a bad place at a bad time. The Donegal Gaeltacht has been an employment "blackspot" among the seven Gaeltacht areas (see panel), and suffered more than many regions during the difficult post 9/11 economic period. The agency, with 110 staff and a total budget of just over €32 million last year, has to create 800 jobs a year under a National Development Plan (NDP) decree, building on some 7,500 existing posts. Last year, the Údarás created 1,071 new posts. However, some 913 jobs were lost, leaving a net gain of just 161.
Among the new businesses secured were the risk and insurance services firm, Marsh Ireland, which took on 50 staff and expects to employ 85 in total at the Údarás business centre in Spiddal, Co Galway; and 100 new pharmaceutical jobs at Bioniche Teo in Inverin, Co Galway. The Glasgow-based company, Contact 4, also established two "customer contact" centres in Gaoth Dobhair, Co Donegal, and in Dingle, Co Kerry, while a third is anticipated for Achill, Co Mayo.
However, the Scottish company was recently accused of insisting that its staff speak English - a claim denied by the Údarás. Several candidates in this week's elections highlighted a growing trend toward "bussing in" staff to companies in Connemara. This has been attributed variously to a reluctance among Gaeltacht residents to take on lower-paid jobs; and difficulties among younger Gaeltacht natives in purchasing or building houses in their locality under current planning restrictions.
The agency's grant-aid conditions include a commitment to employ Irish speakers and to engage in a language promotion plan. However, an advertisement in last week's Connacht Tribune for an engineering position in an Údarás-supported company in Carraroe was published in English and makes no mention of ability to speak in Irish. The agency maintains that the number "bussed in" is minimal but agrees that there has been some "slippage" due to a tendency for companies to recruit through agencies or the internet.
"Slippage" may be a polite term for what some critics argue is the agency's failure to focus on its remit at a time when Irish language use in Gaeltacht areas is declining. The agency has no specific language plan, and until recently less than 10 per cent of its budget was allocated to Irish-speaking community development, language and culture initiatives. Its acknowledged success has been the training initiatives set up as part of the development of the Irish language television station TG4. It is also trying to co-ordinate application of Irish language planning conditions adopted by seven local authorities under the new planning Act.
A 2001 report for Coimisiún na Gaeltachta by Prof Mícheál Ó Cinnéide of NUI, Galway noted the historical link between industrial development and linguistic decline. It noted that the agency was restricted under the terms of its legislation, and it recommended a fundamental restructuring.
Last year, Dr Finbarr Bradley of NUI Maynooth's economics department recommended that the Údarás board of 20 be cut in half, with as few as three elected by the public. Dr Bradley analysed board meeting minutes from October 2003 to July 2005 for Nuacht TG4 and concluded that the board spent most of its time managing local initiatives which would be best left to the executive, instead of formulating long-term strategies and policies. The fact that most board members were local politicians encouraged this "short-term" approach, he noted.
Bradley recommended appointing experts in linguistics, education and economic and social development to a slimmer board, and electing three members - one from each province of Ulster, Connacht and Munster. Other state boards such as Enterprise Ireland and Shannon Development had no more than 10 members on their board, none of whom were publicly elected, he pointed out.
Yet the democratic nature of Údarás na Gaeltachta is fiercely defended by even its harshest critics, some of whom believe its remit should be broadened to encompass planning issues, while others believe that it has become little more than a "gravy train with many carriages". Donncha Ó hEallaithe, maths lecturer at Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology and author of several independent analyses of Irish language use in Gaeltacht areas, says that employment of just under 8,000 people is a "fair achievement".
If the agency hadn't built up a manufacturing base - albeit now in decline - the impact of rationalisation in agriculture and commercial fishing could have been much more traumatic, Ó hEallaithe says. Having worked for the Údarás predecessor, Gaeltarra Éireann, under Cathal MacGabhann, he believes there was a vision for the language which the Údarás has lost sight of. Development of aquaculture, spearheaded by Gaeltarra, and support for TG4 are two positive aspects, he acknowledges, but there has been a dramatic reduction in the number of film and media companies created to service TG4.
Ó hEallaithe has also identified a lack of specific expertise at board level, and his analysis of board minutes during 2003 revealed only one motion concerning the Irish language - that related to its controversial status at EU level, which some have dismissed as a job-creation exercise. He is also very critical of the Government directive encouraging the agency to sell some of its assets, worth some €140 million in total, without any firm language conditions attached.
Ó hEallaithe proposes a board of 10, with one staff representative and nine others representing Gaeltacht communities, nominated by community-based organisations rather than political parties. These 10 would in turn co-opt six other members who would be experts in areas ranging from socio-linguistics to employment creation. Candidates who failed to run their election campaigns through Irish should be disqualified, he believes.
The Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Éamon Ó Cuív, is currently reviewing the Údarás functions, and says he intends to reduce the emphasis on industrial development. He discounts proposals to reconstitute the board however. "Some experts and commentators have a deep suspicion of democracy, whereas I am a huge believer in it," the Minister told The Irish Times. "I can get plenty of technical and expert advice, and if there is one problem with this Government it is that there isn't enough political input into decisions at times."
A separate review of Irish language use commissioned by the Minister will be published next year, he says - one which should provide further evidence, if more were needed, of the need to redraw Gaeltacht boundaries. Given the revived interest in the language in non-Gaeltacht areas, as reflected in the growth of gaelscoileanna, Prof Micheál Ó Cinnéide of NUI, Galway believes it may be time to define the Gaeltacht in sociological, rather than geographical, terms.
