Blog na Gaeilge

During his recent visit to New York, the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs Éamon Ó Cuív stated that the Irish language would be at a positive tipping point if it had 250,000 speakers by 2028.

Let’s compare that to the latest census figures. 1,600,000 people claimed in 2006 to be able to speak Irish.

139,000 people speak Irish at least weekly outside of the education system.

Effectively, Minister Ó Cuív hopes to have an extra 100,000 people actively speaking the Irish language within 20 years.

However, he in no way stated that he expects that figure to become true.

The Irish government is undermining the use of Irish as an official EU language. This is according to the EU commission.

The specific problems are an out-of-date official modern grammar, leading to partly conflicting use of standards.

There is also a lack of qualified Irish translators and interpretors. There is no training course in the Republic for conference interpretors.

This points to an overall problem of lack of will of the Irish government to promote the use of the language.

Meanwhile, demand for Irish translation at the commission is also running 80 per cent above estimates provided by the Government before the language attained official status.

Source: The Irish Times - Ireland.com

The Health Minister has ended automatic translation into Irish of adverts and press releases of his department.

The policy had cost £151,000 over five years.

At best, I think the adverts would have only increased some awareness of the language of readers of the newspapers. Perhaps such money could be better used to promote the speaking and learning of Iris.

Irish became one of the official languages of the EU

What does that mean?

On 13 June 2005 the Council of Ministers (foreign ministers) adopted a Regulation 9645/05 that granted Irish language the status of official and working language of the European Union. The Regulation stands in support of the EU orientation to promote the richness and linguistic diversity of the EU. It came into effect on 1 January 2007.

Despite the costs of the growing extent of the translations and interpretations the EU not only ecourages multilingualism of its citizens, but also tries to approach the citizens by bringing the political and administrative structure of the EU closer to them - using their mother tongue.

Since Irish accession to EEC in 1973 the Irish language had a status of a Treaty language, meaning that all the treaties had to be translated to Irish, however, Irish wasn’t treated as a working language. When the Regulation came into efect earlier this year it meant that English was no longer the only working language for the Irish representatives in the EU bodies. To be more exact, it means that all key EU legislation has to be translated to Irish and all the acts adopted in codesicion by European Parliament and the Council will be published in Irish (other legislative acts will be exempted for a period of five years since effective translation and interpretation services are yet to be established) .

On a practical level, it implies that Irish representatives are able to address the Council in Irish and that Irish job seekers can put down Irish language when they’re applying for a job that requires knowledge of EU official languages.

Other positive implications of this Regulation include the recruitment of 30 or so Irish translators and interpreters. Providing job opportunitites for Irish speakers is a great acquisition, but making Irish the official language of the EU brings about an important recognition of a language that had been neglected in the past. however, the recognition of the language is not the only achievement. The greatest development is the fact that the Irish speaking community in Ireland is granted the same rights and benefits that arise from EU-citizenship as any other linguistic community in the EU.