A chara, – It was somewhat ironic that the reception hosted by President Michael D Higgins at Áras an Uachtaráin in honour of Seán Ó Cuirreáin ("Lack of services in Irish dismays Higgins", Home News, March 6th) took place at exactly the same time as Minister of State for the Gaeltacht Dinny McGinley was being questioned at an Oireachtas subcommittee on the issues raised by Mr Ó Cuirreáin's decision to retire early from his post as the State's first coimisinéir teanga.
Speaking “as President of Ireland”, Mr Higgins stated that he was “greatly concerned at the apparent low level of ability to fulfil the rights of citizens who wish to interact through Irish with the State and its agencies”.
Reporting on the big march that took place in Dublin a few weeks ago, your Irish language editor Pól Ó Muirí (Bileog, February 19th) remarked on the gulf which exists between the Irish-speaking community and the general English-speaking public, saying they hardly inhabited the same planet, let alone the same country! As one of the thousands of people who marched down O’Connell Street that day on our way to the Dáil, I have to admit you could not help noticing the puzzled look on the faces of Saturday shoppers as they waited patiently for the buses which were backed up behind us.
A lot of these onlookers, I’d say, were thinking to themselves, have that crowd nothing better to protest about? Haven’t they got recognition for Irish as a core school subject, haven’t they got their own radio and TV stations funded by the Government, haven’t they got the constitutional right to use Irish in their dealings with the state? We Gaeilgeoirí have to acknowledge that the general public would be quite correct on the first two of these propositions – Irish does still hold a central place in our education system, and Raidió na Gaeltachta and TG4 are both excellent stations which punch far above their weight.
Where the general public’s perception falls down is on the third proposition – that we Irish speakers have the right to use Irish in our dealings with the State. In theory and under the Constitution this may be the case, but in practice it is usually impossible or else extremely difficult to use Irish for official purposes. This has long been the weakness in the State’s overall policy on the Irish language. As Mr Ó Cuirreáin put it, the State imposes a duty on students to learn the language and then frequently puts obstacles in their way of using it for official purposes.
I know a section of the public will still say, so what? But the point is that it does not make sense for any of us if one arm of the State is contradicting what another arm of it is trying to facilitate. If, as a country, we want Irish to survive even as a small minority language, the State will have to take the practical steps necessary to provide for the right of Irish speakers to use the language in the public sphere. As a former civil servant myself, I’m convinced that this is above all a question of political and administrative will and does not have to involve any extra resources.
No language can survive if its use is confined to just private and domestic contexts. A lot of us now feel we can only practice the language with other consenting adults behind closed doors. No wonder people look at us as if we had two heads the odd time we muster the courage to march down the main street of our capital city. – Is mise,
JOHN GLENNON,
Bannagroe,
Hollywood, Co Wicklow.