I move:-
That the Dáil is of opinion that the Irish-speaking districts are dwindling, and that the use of the Irish language as a vernacular in these districts is declining, and that this position should be systematically examined and reported on so that remedies may be considered.
I move this motion for the purpose of drawing attention to the fact that it is really necessary that some system should be adopted of assembling systematically from time to time either statistics or reports which would show us exactly what the position of the Irish language is in the Irish-speaking districts. In dealing with the matter, I do not want to discuss in an argumentative way any aspect of the Irish language or its position there. There are very many people in the country who take a real and sincere interest in the Irish language, but who may take that interest for different reasons. There are very many people in the country interested in the language who would like to apply varying remedies with a view to strengthening it in one way or another. But in order to clear ideas and to clear arguments and to help to come to some realisation of what exactly should be done, one thing is really necessary, and that is that we should know systematically how the Irish-speaking districts stand, what is the position of strength and of use, of growth or decline, of the Irish language as a vernacular in those areas.
I move this motion with a view to considering how that picture can best be got and can best be permanently kept there. That is the only reason why I do it. I do not even want to argue in any way about the importance of the language. We have shown our appreciation of the importance of the language when we enshrined it in our Constitution as the national language.
Whether we regard the language as useful from a political point of view or from an educational point of view or from a spiritual and cultural point of view no matter how we regard it, we ought to watch with the greatest possible care and anxiety the position of the language in the Irish-speaking districts; that is the language as a living speech carried down there for thousands of years; because very few people—I do not want even to argue that—can believe that, if the language weakens or dies in the Irish-speaking districts, we can maintain in any strength the language for what it really and fundamentally is, that is, the expression of the minds of our people going back to the very beginnings of history, and as such, very definitely the language of an original civilisation bearing its message to us in a way that is higher than politics or mere culture. It is the expression of the mind of the Gael on matters of creation and of the receptivity of the mind of the Gael from the Creator Himself.
It is with that precious outlook on the language that I appeal for a systematic review of the situation in the Irish-speaking districts that will show us exactly how things are, because it would be a cultural stain on our character as a nation if, in our days, with full control over our own affairs, a language that persisted for centuries under all kinds of difficulties and all kinds of dangerous circumstances should pass away like snow off the hills without our noticing it. There is evidence that to some extent that is happening. Some people may object to passing a motion that says that the Irish-speaking districts are dwindling. If I thought that anybody might baulk at passing the last part of the motion owing to a statement like that, I would have left it out. But I wanted to express a certain amount of my own opinion on the matter, and I do not think anyone need baulk at the statement that the Irish-speaking districts are dwindling.
In June, 1935, there was an official enumeration carried out through the Irish-speaking districts inquiring into the number of farms in the various Irish-speaking districts in which (1) Irish was the natural language of the home and was spoken by all the children in the home as the natural language of the household; (2) the number of farms in each of these districts where Irish was the natural language of the parents, but where the children tended to speak English. The figures were provided in May, 1936. I do not know if they are recorded in the Dáil Debates, but they are available through the Statistics Department of the Department of Industry and Commerce. That return shows that in the Irish-speaking districts — Donegal, Mayo, Galway, Clare, Kerry, Cork and Waterford—there were 12,950 farms where the older and younger people all spoke the Irish language as the natural medium of intercourse, and that in what was called the Breac-Ghaeltacht there were 1,029 families. Therefore, according to that return, there were 13,979 families in which, for old and young, Irish was their language and that as regards families where the older people naturally spoke Irish amongst themselves, but the younger tended to speak English, in the pure Gaeltacht there were 11,908 such rural homes and in the Breac-Ghaeltacht, 8,702. Therefore, there was a total of 13,979 families all speaking Irish and an additional number of 20,610 where the older people spoke Irish, but English was the language of the children.
About that time the scheme of paying £2 to children who went to school with a pre-school knowledge of Irish and who spoke Irish in the homes was put into operation, and in the figures which are provided for the year 1935-36 there is a very serious discrepancy between the position disclosed when the £2 grant had to be given out and the enumeration made under the Statistics Department of the Department of Industry and Commerce, because as against the 13,900 rural homes where parents and children entirely spoke the Irish language, there were only 5,278 families sending children to school in such a way as to earn the £2 grant per child. Never since then has there been any reflection in the school figures that there ever came from the 20,000 homes where the older people spoke Irish, but the younger children spoke English, even under the influence of the £2 scheme, any children speaking Irish.
The latest information we have with regard to the schools position is disclosed in the report of the Department of Education for 1943-44. We find from the figures therein that, while 5,278 families were sending their children to school with Irish as their natural language in 1935-36, in 1943-44 there were only 4,586 such families. There had been a fall of 692 families, in the small number of families involved in that, as between 1935-36, representing a fall of 13.1 per cent. Those figures alone warrant our saying that the Irish-speaking districts are dwindling. As between the various countries, in Donegal there was a fall of 203 in the number of families, or 11 per cent.; in Mayo it was 115 or 15 per cent.; in Galway the fall was 156 or 9.2 per cent.; in Kerry it was 225 or 40.5 per cent., marking a very considerable fall in Kerry; in Cork there was an increase of 29; in Waterford there was a fall of 14, or 15.3 per cent. With the exception of that slight increase in Cork, where the total number of families sending children to school with Irish in 1943-44 was only 196, and in Clare where the number had increased from two to four, there was a decline all along. The language, which was depending on 5,278 families in 1935-36, was depending on only 4,586 in 1943-44.
When we turn to the number of children and look particularly at the province of Munster, we find for 1935-36 there were 1,804 children benefiting under the scheme. That fell by 584 children to 1,220 in the year 1943-44. There had been a fall in the number of children attending Munster schools—that is, Cork, Kerry, Waterford, and Clare—of 32 per cent. That was in a province remarkable for its great literary tradition.
When we consider what the language is, the tradition enshrined in it, both from a spiritual and from a national point of view, and handed down from generation to generation, a language that, from the birth of literature in Ireland, has been used as the written medium of the literature, we see the position to which Irish has been reduced in the Province of Munster. When we consider the families that are sending the children to school we find the average number of children coming from each family in the purely Irish-speaking districts is 2.05, that is to say, the average family is sending no more than two children to school. In the Gaeltacht the figure is 1.88 and in the Breac-Ghaeltacht, 1.73. We are, therefore, dealing with a small number of families using Irish with the characteristic that not more than an average of two children and, in most cases, something under two are attending school. That is the situation disclosed by those figures, which are the only facts we have to show the numerical strength of the language and whether it is going up or down. It is a very meagre piece of information.
We have not much information regarding the administrative side but, nevertheless, we know of the regulations under which officials are appointed under local authorities to Irish-speaking districts and are required, if they have not Irish when appointed, to qualify in the use of Irish in their normal work inside a period of three years. We can learn from the figures regarding the weakness of the present position. The figures I have are those for 1942, and I do not know whether they have changed radically since. At that time, the Minister for Local Government could not suggest there was going to be any real improvement in the situation. In 1942, in Donegal, we had 40 officials who were appointed under the Gaeltacht Order but had under five years' service and who had not qualified in Irish; we had 18 who had more than five years' service, four of them having more than 10 years' service without having the necessary qualification. In Mayo, we had 26 officials appointed on the understanding that they would learn Irish inside three years, that is, 26 who had not more than five years' service; and 29 who had more than five years' service and who had not qualified, and of those 13 had been there for 10 years or more. In Galway, there were 54 with less than five years' service, 37 with more than five, of whom six had more than 10. In Clare, there were eight officials with more than five years' service who did not qualify. In Kerry, there were five with more than five years' and 41 under five years. In Cork, there were 59 under five years, and 14 over five years; in Waterford, 18 under five, and five over five. I think it is a symptom of the lack of strength of the language in those districts that officials should go in there on an understanding that, in order to be permanent, they would have to qualify in being able to speak the Irish language to such an extent as to be able to carry on their duties through it and continued every year, apparently, without succeeding in qualifying.
The question arises as to how we can get a picture of the situation and how it can be kept presented systematically to the public, so that anybody who has an interest in the language from any point of view will have a full picture of the situation and will be in a position to help us all in suggesting remedies of one kind or another.
We want to see how the language is in the homes. It should be possible to do that. We have our whole body of teachers, a large number of very interested clergy, our police who are in touch with the lives of the people, all kinds of voluntary workers such as those who work for the Folklore Society and such societies interested in maintaining the language in one way or another. We have all that machinery of personnel there. It should be possible to set out the kind of questionnaire that would give a picture of how the language stands in the home.
Those of us who were attracted to the study of the language in days gone by, and visited and lived in the Irish districts, know what were the things that caught our imagination there. We know what were the things that, in the ordinary talk of the people and in the literature that they possessed in such great volume, caught their imagination. Anyone with experience of that would be able to prepare a series of questions which, answered systematically, would tell you whether the language was vigorous in the home as a language, and whether the language, as spoken in the home, retained the old literary vigour and tradition that so mark the language because of its history and tradition. There are a number of questions that could be framed, and that, when answered by various minds, would let us know the extent to which the language was a living, vigorous and thriving language in the homes. Then there is the question of the marketplace and of the shops, and the extent to which Irish is spoken in public by people in congregation or by people carrying on their marketing. There is a number of simple questions that could be answered systematically for each parish in that way. The same would apply to recreation, to the use of the language in administration and to the use of the language in Church matters.
I am looking more for a presentation of a picture of the situation that would be given by the Statistics Branch of the Department of Industry and Commerce than that which would be given by, say, any other branch of the Administration. We prepare maps and diagrams for very many things that are not of as great importance at all as the language. We have a precious thing there.
We have, as I have said, put it very high, not only in our national symbolism but we have brought it very close to the spirit of the nation. We have persuaded ourselves that the real spirit of the nation cannot exist or persist and cannot express itself except we endeavour more and more to express the Irish mind through it. That being so, we should do everything we possibly could to reflect to ourselves and to the public generally what the condition of things is there at the moment. We have nothing but these few figures that reach us every year through the Reports of the Department of Education on the one hand, and the figures which we are afraid to call for from time to time with regard to the use of Irish in administration.
I think that we must make up our minds to this: that unless we save the language as a vigorous living language, expressing the full mind and soul of our people in the Irish-speaking districts, we have no hope of having the language here anything but something that is tossed about, swishing to and fro on politics. If we do not realise what the language is as expressing the soul of the people and allow it to fall into the political arena as a symbol or a flag—if it is allowed to fall as low as that—it is going to do the country more damage than anything else. I ask to have it agreed if you like that, except we save the Irish-speaking districts and the language there as a living language, we are not going to save the language at all. Whether you agree with that or not, I say that in view of the position in which we have placed the language: in view of the work that we are asking to have done in the schools for it, that we should set ourselves systematically, and in every possible way, to provide statistically and diagrammatically by way of report, this limited number of aspects of the language in the Irish-speaking districts, and in that way put ourselves in the position that we know how the language stands there. If we do not do that, then I think the position is going to be that some fine morning we, or the next generation, are going to wake up and find that, like the snow off the top of Errigal, the language is gone from the only place where it can have any strength, and the only place where it can assist in any way the work that is being done in the schools.
