I move:—
That the Seanad requests the Executive Council to set up a Commission to consider and report on the further steps which might be taken through the medium of broadcasting, talking pictures and printed publications to supplement and make more effective the work for the Irish language at present being done in the schools.
I put down this motion because certain things lately have convinced me that it is time that the matters to which this motion refers were very thoroughly explored and that they were gone into more carefully, with greater attention and in a more formal way than has been the case up to the present. The policy of preserving and restoring the Irish language is a national policy. It is a policy that has been followed by two Governments. It is part of the policy of all the principal Parties in this country. At the same time, anybody who pays attention to the facts must be aware that the difficulties in the way of making the position of the Irish language secure have by no means been overcome. In fact, nobody who is aware of the whole facts of the situation could say with certainty that the Irish language will be saved as a spoken language which can be spread again over the whole country from the areas in which it has survived up to the present time. The schools, both primary and otherwise, are naturally the principal media by which the language may be preserved and extended. I think that so far as the schools are concerned everything that may be done has either been done or is in train. Of course, the schools are not yet the effective medium that we would wish. That is to say, taking the schools generally, they cannot be put into the position that we would like to have them. That will not be possible for 30 or 40 years more. The Minister for Education in a speech in the Dáil last week mentioned the fact that a quarter of the national teachers have, up to the present, no qualification for teaching Irish. In Leinster, he said that in some areas as much as half are without qualifications. It is going to be a very long time before we will reach the point that all teachers have the qualifications we should wish for. It is going to be 30 or 40 years before they all have the qualifications we should wish them to have. Even the teachers who entered on their work since the Treaty, though not without qualifications, have not in many cases the qualifications up to the necessary standard. These teachers were allowed through and they are perhaps better than many of the teachers who were trained under the old régime. But they are not absolutely qualified. The schools would serve the cause of the language by making new Irish speakers and by educating those who come to school already knowing Irish in such a way that they would give new vigour to the language in the districts in which it is spoken and cause a new point of view to prevail amongst the people there. Generally speaking there is still going on a process of decay of the language. If the schools and the other machinery at work cannot do all that is required, there are other reasons, beyond the fact that a great many teachers are either unqualified or not fully qualified to do the work. I need not go into some of them, such as the fact that you have schools in which the classes are much too large for the new and difficult work of restoring the language.
I want to go into the question of the atmosphere that surrounds school work and the support that ought to be given to school work. Because of the various factors you find the work of the school being undone, you find that children going to school may be living in a house with elder brothers and sisters who have themselves left school a year or two, or find that in many cases those elder brothers and sisters have more or less dropped interest in the Irish language, or have dropped its study or have dropped the habit of using the language which they may have acquired at school. If it is not a case of brothers and sisters in the house, it is the young people next door or the new people with whom they may be working in the factories and shops or with whom they may be playing football. Although these themselves may have only left school a year or two, they are not showing that interest in the language that they should show, say, by using it. All these things tend to make the work in the schools, no matter how good the teacher may be, less effective than it should be.
Of course the restoration of the Irish language cannot be accomplished merely by what the State may do. There has got to be voluntary effort and individual enthusiasm. The question of organising this voluntary effort and inspiring that individual enthusiasm is a matter with which I do not want to deal on this motion. I want to deal with the things that the State ought to do and must do in addition to putting the schools right and doing what is already being done by way of making a knowledge of Irish necessary for various professions, for entry into the public services and for things of that sort. I mentioned briefly when the programmes in the Broadcasting Station were being criticised the treatment of Irish by our broadcasting service and I said that it was extremely bad. In the first place the quantity of Irish given out is much too little. It is very small and it is very much less than what is given out in Welsh by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the Cardiff station which serves the most anglicised part of Wales and a large part of the West of England where there is no Welsh at all.
The Cathaoirleach resumed the Chair.
I think our station here ought to give us, to begin with, seven hours a week of Irish, rising to 14 hours a week. I am not suggesting that that ought to be taken out of the time that is now given to broadcasting. I think there ought to be some extension of hours. I do not want to say whether that Irish matter ought all to be interlarded with English matter or whether there should not be an entire Irish night and some other Irish broadcasts through the rest of the week. These might be matters on which there would be great differences of opinion; also as to the question of whether there might not, with three stations, be alternative programmes. I do think that it is necessary, if we are not to wilfully waste the work that is being done in the schools, that something like a fair show be given to the Irish language in the Broadcasting Station. Not only must there be more time given to it, but there must be an improvement in quality.
I admit that that question of getting the quality right is quite a difficult one. It was a matter to which, perhaps, I did not give as much time and thought some years ago as I ought to have done, but I did to a certain extent take it up and made certain representations which, however, came to nothing. I have now reached the conclusion that one of the things wanted is additional staff in the station to deal with the problem. So far as English is concerned, it would be possible to organise a fairly good programme of lectures and talks by simply selecting from the applicants who would come forward the people who will lecture or give talks. But so far as Irish is concerned it is quite a different thing.
The number qualified to give talks in Irish is small. Remember numbers of people who might be qualified from the point of view of Irish have not the other experience, and people with the experience have not the standard of Irish necessary. So it is a question of going after people. It might also be a question of paying higher fees. It will not do simply to write a person to ask him to lecture in Irish. It may be necessary to go to see him. Some years ago I sent a list of suggestions to the then director of the Broadcasting Station saying that people like those I mentioned should be got to talk. I gather that these people were written to but that nothing came of it. There are people who dislike going before the microphone, and there are all sorts of reasons of that kind which may have operated. I think it would be necessary to go after Irish speakers and perhaps to press them a great deal.
I believe myself that a great deal of the broadcasting time for Irish should be given to talks. You would need a Gaelic Talks Director. I here have a list of names of people who could be looked up. I could easily run off up to 40 people each of whom could give a lecture in Irish. Most of them could, I believe, be got to do it if there were a Talks Director to urge them on. They are people whose names and qualifications are known and they have good Irish. A great deal of attention should be given to making it a matter not of duty but of interest on the part of the youth of the country to listen to Irish talks. Although we do not have political debates or discussions carried on in the studio in English for the benefit of listeners, I rather think that it would be desirable to do so in Irish. That would give young people an interest. I would like to hear the Minister for Education and a national teacher discussing the question of what is possible to be done for Irish in a city school with classes of the size they are. It would be something to which people would listen. We might have other things of that kind too. The same sort of difficulty exist in regard even to the drama or dramatic matters and the question of songs as in regard to lectures. There is no great choice of matter or personnel. I think that money would have to be paid for the adaptation of plays or for the translation of plays. If plays are to be given, some special arrangement might have to be made for the actual acting, reading or production of them which takes place in the studio, but if we are to do any good with the Irish programme it is not a matter which can be left to the offers of people who wish to perform. There must be a staff; there must be some money spent; and there must be forethought and care to an extent that has not been possible under the system that exists. It may be, for instance, necessary to look out for books from which special plays for broadcasting might be secured. I understand that the plays that are most successful as broadcast plays are those specially written for broadcasting and not those really written for the stage. I should imagine that it would be part of the business of the Broadcasting Station to offer prizes and to employ people, if they could find competent people, to adapt plays. Otherwise, there will be an uninteresting, thin and, to a large extent, useless programme.
Then, there is the question of songs in Irish. There are lots of lovely and surpassingly excellent songs, but when you are dealing with the revival of a language and the maintenance of an interest in it, you cannot run along on old songs. You cannot always bring out the old favourites and those old songs which have failed to be favourites. This is a problem which would not face the British broadcasting service and it would not face the broadcasting services in other countries, but it does definitely face the service here—this question of trying to see if it is possible to get new songs. Are there people who can write new songs or musicians who can set music to new songs, or, if you do not go as far as that, can compose new words for old songs? I saw a whole audience being very much interested, pleased and amused when somebody sang the Irish version of "Biddy Mulligan, the Pride of the Coombe," and if we can do no better, can we not get people who would from time to time compose such songs?
I do not think we should be rigid or take up an impossiblist attitude on the question of Irish music because the popular songs of the day are going to be sung here and they are going to be known here. I heard people talking about youngsters in the Blasket Islands singing the popular song of the day and my feeling is that it would be worth consideration whether we should not get somebody to write Irish words to the tune of "Get Along, Little Dogie, Get Along" or "The Isle of Capri." There may be a great difference of opinion in regard to that, but in any case, I think there must be newness and variety in songs and that is one of the big difficulties which the station has to face. It is not merely sufficient to have the old songs; the need for newness exists.
There is then the question of school broadcasts. I notice that from the Cardiff Station to which I referred, there are broadcasts, perhaps three or four times a week, at five minutes past three o'clock for schools. I have never happened to be at home at a time when I could listen to one of them and I do not really know what sort of stuff is given in them, but I take it that they are historical lectures designed specially for school children. I mentioned already that many of our national teachers are not fully qualified to make Irish speakers. They cannot be and we will not have them all so qualified for, certainly, 30 years more. It would be a great help, I feel, in those schools in which the teacher can make a fair shape at teaching Irish, but is not really highly qualified, if broadcasting were brought into the life of the schools and if the children could, a couple of times a week, hear other people talking Irish to them on some subject. Even where the teacher is very good, if the school is in a district in which there is little Irish spoken, I think you are not going to make Irish speakers merely through the work of the teacher alone. You must bring in other elements and the question as to whether we should arrange for broadcasts for schools and make some arrangement for the provision of receiving sets so that these broadcasts could be heard in the schools deserves great attention. The thing is being done across the water and it seems to me that there is a need for something like that here.
I referred last week to the news service from the Dublin studio. I think that every night there ought to be a news bulletin in Irish which is not going to be translated. There is nothing more tiresome or more useless than to have matter given out first in Irish, and then in English. Various people have also mentioned to me that it might be considered whether religious discourses, lectures or sermons might not be given every Sunday afternoon in Irish, or at least, from time to time. I think the broadcasting of descriptions of outside events might also take place in Irish. There is also the question of announcers. If we are going to have Irish used a good deal in broadcasting—and the question of dialect enters into it—my own feeling is that we ought to have a couple of announcers, who, I think, ought to have Connacht Irish. Although the Irish I learned myself is Munster Irish and my interest lies in that direction, I think that the middle dialect, as someone has called it, is what should be most generally used. There might be a great deal of discussion on that, and I think it is an important matter. The announcers ought to be Connacht men who have experience of other dialects and who could, therefore, avoid certain pronunciations and phrases that would make understanding difficult.
A great deal more might be said about broadcasting, but I think the subject is important enough and intricate enough to justify some special steps being taken to consider what should be done. All that could be done might not be undertaken in the beginning, but some plan might be laid down to bring about greater development. There is a new director coming in and I am not suggesting anything that I am putting forward now, with a view to handicapping or prejudicing him. I think that if the whole problem were considered his work might be made easier for him. For instance, finance difficulties might be removed, and, on the whole, a great deal of progress made much more speedily. The question of broadcasting is one which did not arise when the Gaelic League was formed. Broadcasting is a new discovery and it is something which could be made serviceable to the revival of the Irish language and something which, if not dealt with, could be very injurious to the Irish language.
I think the same thing applies to talking pictures. We are promised stereoscopic pictures and coloured pictures within a year or two and these are going to add still further to the popularity and to the influence of talking pictures. It seems to me that, with the spread of picture houses and with additional attractiveness in pictures, if we are to have no talking pictures in Irish language the outlook for the preservation of the Irish language, in view of its present position, is rather blue. I think that is a matter which the Government must take up. I saw it announced some time ago, when a talking picture to which I shall refer was shown, that the Government had spent a little money to get this picture made, but that any further efforts in that direction were not for the State. I think that is a wrong view. The Government has had to take up the publication of books and, as in other countries, broadcasting, and I feel that as far as the Irish language is concerned, it is necessary, for some time at any rate, that the Government should give attention to the production of talking pictures.
I think the Government ought not to be discouraged by the result of a picture like "Oidhche Sheanchais." I admit that that picture is a model of everything an Irish talking picture ought not to be. I am not speaking in any sort of cavilling spirit. Personally, if I had had ministerial responsibility, I very probably would have done what the Government did. I know that when I heard that Mr. Flaherty was to make the picture, I thought it was a fine thing. I thought he was the sort of man who would make a good picture. I had not seen his "Man of Aran" or his other pictures and I did not realise that he was a man whose speciality, while he is a camera artist of great distinction, was to present wild and woolly people from wild and woolly places to the denizens of metropolitan drawing-rooms, and that what he would do with a picture of Ireland was sure to be wrong from our point of view. Everybody who saw the picture will realise that it is not propagandist in effect, but, rather, I should say, contrapropagandist. First, we had Maggie Dirrane, who has no voice for singing, made to sing part of a song which gave a note of grotesqueness at the beginning.
Then, we had the choice of subject. There is nothing duller than folklore to the ordinary man in the street, and I should say that it was a mistake to choose a folklore subject, but if it had to be folklore, we have to remember that the women and girls who have Irish are the same as the women and girls who have no Irish, and I am sure that any of them would rather have had the tale told by Tiger King than by the old gentleman with whiskers who did tell it. In any case, the face of the old man, who may be a good story-teller, was expressionless; his emphasis was absurd, as it is in the case of many of these story-tellers; and, generally, it was the most hopeless thing possible from the point of view of entertainment. I am not saying that by way of cavilling because anybody could have made the mistake. It merely illustrates the difficulties before us. I saw that some people blamed the Irish speakers of Dublin for not going to the picture. Of course, that is all wrong. If a picture is right, the people will go to it and enjoy it; if the people do not go to it, you may take it that the picture is wrong and not the people. It was one of those things that was not a success, but there is nobody to blame. It was well worth the very little money spent on it. The very knowledge gained and the pitfalls it disclosed were more than worth the very little money spent on it. I think the Government ought to make up its mind either that it will take up this question of talking pictures or have it examined by a commission, as I suggest.
I think again, that the first talking pictures ought to be made for the schools. I have pointed out two or three times already the deficiencies of so many teachers. You may do something else for children in Dublin. You might arrange to take them to theatrical performances at which Irish would be well and naturally spoken, just as they are taken to concerts given by the military band, but for the children throughout Leinster and most of the places in which there is no Irish, there is very little means of bringing them into touch with the natural speaking of the language at present, and I do not believe that, even where the teacher is tip-top, his work alone is sufficient. Where the teacher is just only able to carry on, I think it is more necessary, if there is to be any hope of the children becoming Irish speakers, that they have some experience of Irish being spoken in a natural way. There are, I understand, portable sets whereby talking pictures can be projected in any hall and I think that if talking pictures in Irish, suitable for school children and interesting to school children, were made, it would be a great advantage to take them around the schools and show them to the children who had made some progress with Irish. Of course, that sort of picture is as difficult to make as any, but they could be short and cheap. The Government could then proceed to other pictures which might be shown generally in the country.
I remember seeing a French picture a year or two ago in which the spoken matter was in French, but there was very little spoken matter and the picture was so arranged that people who knew no French could follow it and enjoy it. It might be possible to make pictures in Irish with very little spoken matter which could be generally shown here without causing fierce discontent amongst the non-Irish-speaking audiences in the ordinary picture houses.
There is also the question of whether Gaelic editions of English pictures could be got. I do not know the first thing about the technique of picture-making but it might be possible to do that and to fit other voices on to the actors. I do not know whether that could be done with any artistic effect, but the whole matter, I think, requires examination. I feel positive that if it is not tackled the work of the schools is going to be largely undone in the picture houses when the children leave the school and there will be nothing to support the children in any tendency to use and to keep up their knowledge of Irish once they leave school. Of course, the difficulty on that side may be relieved to some extent later, if television develops and other means of dealing with the problem may appear.
I come now to the last point which I set down in the motion and that is the question of publications. This is an age of print. There is practically no illiteracy. Everybody reads and a great many people read a good deal. With the disappearance of illiteracy in the Gaeltacht—Senators will understand my point—a certain protection for the language goes.
In the recent past, the greatest bulwark of the Irish language in a particular district was the existence of a certain number of monoglot Irish speakers. I heard of one village in County Galway which had become practically an outpost for the speaking of Irish. All around it, English had crept in. What kept Irish as a spoken language there was the presence of a young man who was illiterate but who was amusing, witty and influential and who always spoke to the people around him in Irish. He was at no disadvantage in dealing with people who spoke English to him because he was able to make fun of them. He kept the whole village Irish-speaking. That young man was taken to Ballykinlar, learned English there, and, in a very short time after his return, English had become the spoken language of that village. With the complete disappearance, through the work of the schools and of education, of monoglot Irish speakers, the question of plenty of reading matter in Irish becomes of the most urgent necessity. I have myself seen the effect of the introduction of a newspaper printed in English amongst Irish speakers. Before the war, I was in a house in County Kerry which was full of people who were speaking Irish. Somebody brought in a newspaper—say The Kerryman—and read an account of the latest match in which the Kerry team had taken part. For the remainder of the evening, the talk was in English. I have heard other people relate the same experience.
In regard to the question of reading matter, the individual must be remembered. At present, there is no use in thinking of the market for Irish reading matter. You have to think of the individual and what matter is available to the individual. The very fact that the number of Irish-speaking individuals is small practically necessitates the provision of much more reading matter for them than would be otherwise necessary. It is worth noting that, in a small country like Denmark, there is an enormous output of books. I read the other day that, in a recent year, the output of books in Denmark was 3,500, of which 500 were described as representing Danish creative literature. That, I presume, would cover novels, plays and poetry. I suppose the other books were reprints, translations, technical handbooks or school books. That is a very big output in a country which has a population about the size of that of the Free State. I do not think that the Irish language can survive the virtual absence of reading matter in Irish, which is the present position. I read somewhere lately where somebody suggested that there should be no English taught in the Gaeltacht schools. That is a proposition with which I would not agree for various reasons. If it were carried out at the present time, having regard to the absence of reading matter in Irish and the absence of the other facilities to which I have referred, it would be a great injustice to the young people of the Gaeltacht and, in the long run, would produce some reaction that would destroy the possibility of the results for which the people who make the suggestion are hoping. On the question of reading matter, standards are different nowadays from what they were 100 or 200 years ago and a much greater quantity is required. I have referred to the output of books in Denmark as an illustration of this point. I understand that, since the State-aided scheme for the issue of books in Irish was initiated ten years ago, there have been 250 books published. That is absolutely and literally negligible. As many books would be produced in a week in England and the number is a very small fraction of what would be produced in a year in a country like Denmark. I think I have read all the books published in Irish during those years. There may be a few which I found uninteresting and did not pursue, but I have looked at all of them and I have read practically all of them. Yet I have at times been months without reading a single Irish book, although I am not a voracious reader at all. All the matter that is coming out in Irish can be read by anybody who gives to the reading of it about two hours a week. I think that that is a completely impossible position and even the figures do not at all represent the real deficiency. The output for ten years has been about one book or booklet per fortnight. I read all of them and it did not take up much of my time. Most of them, however. I read because of my special concern for Irish. As regards the ordinary reader who reads purely for interest or for pastime, there might not be more than three or four books of those issued which would be of any great interest to him. The boy or young man who likes detective stories and stories of adventure would not have more than a dozen or fourteen books available to him. That means that, after a short time, a boy inclined to read has either to read matter which does not appeal to him and which may be a sort of task to him or turn to the reading of English. That makes the work in the schools— whether primary or secondary— extremely difficult.
I had always hoped that the work of the Book Committee would be speeded up. As long as I was in office, I was trying—I do not say with any great success—to get that done. There are many difficulties in the way but, since I left, I do not think there has been any speeding up. I do not know whether some of the continued delay is due to the people who think that we should print mainly original matter. A small number of very meritorious original books—books of literary excellence—have been produced in Irish, but the number is very small. I was trying to make a note of these works and I could only count about nine or ten books of that sort, in all, published by the Gúm. Some of the books to which I have referred are published by outside publishers. Even if the position improves, the greatest number of original works in Irish of high quality you can get, considering the number of writers available, would be about ten or 12 in the year. Tastes differ, and while you may have 12 quite good books published, there may be only one book available for a particular individual. The output of original Irish books which may be expected is so small, therefore, as to be of no consequence. You cannot expect the majority of people to read Irish on principle. Some people will do that, but most people will simply read what they like and, if that is not available in Irish, they will read it in English.
The fact that there is very little matter available in Irish makes the reading of Irish more difficult. I read every Irish book that comes out, but I could not read Irish at all as quickly as I read English. I could not throw my eye down a page of an Irish book and take in the contents, as I could do in English. I do not suppose that there are more than half-a-dozen persons who could read Irish with the same facility as English is read, the reason being that not 1 per cent. of the matter available to them in English is available to them in Irish. When you have few books available in Irish, the tendency of the people to read Irish is therefore lessened. If there were plenty of books available, the inclination to read would be greater. I am quite sure that there are differences of opinion holding up progress. A commission could thrash out these differences and arrive at a conclusion. I think that we must rely mainly upon translations to provide the reading matter in mass which is necessary if we are to secure the preservation and restoration of the Irish language. I should like to encourage original work. Certain steps in that direction have been taken from time to time. A prize was given for a novel in Irish. The competition was not very successful. Perhaps the prize was not sufficiently good or the time allowed was not sufficient. One of the novels which secured the prize had the appearance of being scamped towards the end, and I have been told that the author said he had to rush it, towards the end, to be in time for the competition. If a prize were awarded every year, a competitor could hold over his work until he was satisfied with it. Many things could be done to encourage original work, but we must rely mainly on translation.
Some people say that we should not have any translations from English. I think that that is a wrong idea but, if it is causing any hold up, it should be considered in some formal way. For the vitality and purity of the Irish language, copious literary translation from English is necessary because, if you have not literary translation, you will have casual verbal translation and you will have any amount of slovenly, unskilful constructions creeping in, which would be bad for the language. If there were a large amount of literary translation, verbal translation would be on a different plane and would be much more skilful and correct. There are difficulties about translation from English. A lot of the translation done must be of contemporary work and the difficulty of getting permission to translate it presents a problem. I agree that we should have as much translation as possible from Continental languages. That would add to the flexibility and balance of development of the Irish language. I think we ought to have translation from all the main continental languages. If we did that and had good work translated into Irish, it might mean that the reader of Irish would have a better and a fuller view of the mind and thought of Europe than an ordinary reader of English would have, in spite of the great richness and quantity of English literature.
What should be done to train people to translate Continental work into Irish is a matter which should be considered. In the last year Cumann na nGaedheal was in office, I got a provision for a small sum inserted in the Estimates to provide in a tentative way for training for writers. That provision disappeared-for what reason I do not know. If that was not the right way of tackling the matter, some other way should be adopted. Whether appointments might not be given in a temporary way on our legation staffs abroad to writers of Irish is a question which might be considered. No matter what we do as regards Irish reading matter, we are not going to be able to cater for the woman who runs to two novels a week. I am told that there are many thousands of women of that class in the country. I do not see any possibility of providing quantity and variety for them but I do think steps ought to be taken to increase the Gúm output to ten times what it has been up to the present time. Even that would not be very much. Steps should also be taken to push sales.
There is another aspect of the Gúm work. Up to the present, only soft stuff is translated such as novels and plays. No works involving technical terminology, whether on religion, architecture, history or art, are coming out, and I have come to the conclusion that it is necessary to employ a staff of translators and to have group work for such books. The Dáil translation staff has done magnificent and marvellous work in its translation of the Acts. I know that there are people who laugh at that work but I should say to most of those who laugh that if they had to sit down themselves and to produce from English statutes adequate Irish translations they would not make much of a job of it. That staff is able to do its marvellous work because there is team work, because there is consultation, and pooling of knowledge and the possibility of discussion. The Gúm translation staff might be smaller than the Dáil staff and might have occasional people on it, as well as permanent people. The position at present is that, for the student or the youth of inquiring mind whose reading, perhaps, is going to result in literary work or speeches or the publication of information, there is practically nothing to read. An infinitely small quantity of reading matter is available but, with the exception of one or two school books, a translation of Dr. Dick Hayes's book on the French Revolution, and the Autobiography of Wolfe Tone which was done by An Seabhac, it is all fiction or plays. That situation must be remedied.
I have noted many things that a boy might be interested in, that he might want to read about, but about which he would not find a word in the Irish language. I refer to such things as gardening, photography, motor cars, religious matters, doctrinal or devotional philosophy, economics, the New Deal, the Soviets, a history of the Great War, a history of the United States of America, foreign travel, aviation. In Irish there is not even a cookery book, a book on contract bridge, on golf, Roman law, or any subject that a man might have an interest in or a desire to study. It seems to me that our work in the schools and elsewhere is going to be futile, in view of the rain of print under which we are living, unless we take steps to remedy that state of affairs. I do not say that it can be remedied in a day, because everywhere we are up against the shortage of trained personnel. There is no doubt, however, that the work that has been done already provides a basis for further work. A certain amount of trained personnel is now available that was not available up to the present. It may be possible soon to get an output, between translations and original works, of four or five books a week. While that would be very little, it would be a beginning, and ultimately a reading public would arise so that losses at present suffered would be lessened.
Incidentally, some steps should be taken, now that the question of folklore has been dealt with, to get into print the great mass of Irish matter, from the eighteenth century particularly, which is in the Royal Irish Academy and which has never been published. There is a great deal of valuable matter there and now is the time it should be published. If not printed inside ten years it need never be printed, because new moulds will have been created in the language.
There is one other thing I want to say about reading matter. Great numbers of people are not going to read books. I had something to do with the initiation of a scheme, that is still provided for in the Estimates, for subsidising papers published in Irish, or newspapers that published news matter in Irish. I have come to the conclusion that that is not adequate, and that any scheme of that sort will not meet the requirements. Dealing with any problem like this, the State cannot really hold to precedent or say that no other State did this or that. I think there is a necessity for something in the form of a weekly publication, a newspaper in Irish. I do not mean a small publication such as was issued by the Gaelic League. I mean a big paper of full newspaper size which will deal with every topic. It might give a little local news from the Gaeltacht. I would not, however, want it to compete with ordinary newspapers, but to give in Irish world news that ordinary people are interested in. The difficulty now is that you do not get that news in Irish. It should contain news of political crises, threats of war, news of earthquakes and sensational murders, new scientific discoveries, whether about heavy hydrogen, oxygen or the helicopter. Most people find some difficulty at present in talking in Irish about some of these things because they are not written about, and are not common topics in Irish-speaking districts. We have people compiling lists of technical terms. It would be far better to have terms that would be read and used week by week. Special steps might be taken to see that such an organ should have a special sale in the Gaeltacht. While such a paper would involve employment of translators, it might be linked up to some extent with other Government services so as to lessen costs. It might mean a considerable loss in the beginning, but I think it is a necessity. We all heard the story of the man in Galway, an Irish speaker, who said: "Bhí an t-M.P. ag cainnt ag meeting i yard an hotel." While that may be a joke, there is in fact a difficulty about dealing with unusual topics or modern topics in Irish, because the ordinary person has not the terminology or the turns of phrase. That is all very much in the way of a handicap to the Irish language and it should be dealt with by the publication of a great weekly paper dealing with all current questions in Irish.
There are a number of other matters in connection with publication which I will not deal with now; I simply suggest that what I have put before the Seanad indicates a big need and a big problem. I do not say that all these things are to be undertaken directly by the State. But it seems to me that something like what I suggest must, at least, be helped by the State, and must be initiated by the State. It may be that some of it would not be done directly by the Government and that the Minister might form boards similar, though on a smaller scale, to the Shannon Board. There may also be a question of special subsidies to private firms to do some of the work. All that is for consideration later. If we do not deal with this problem all these things—broadcasting, talking pictures, and printing—are going to work vitally against the Irish language. We must use them for the preservation of the language. We all know that the language has sunk to a low level owing to certain difficulties and that the decay has not yet been arrested. We are dealing with something that is in a perilous situation and that does not brook any great delay. A commission or some such body is needed to clear the ground, to formulate proposals to curtail difficulties, and to remove obstacles which may be raised, in perfect good faith, in the administrative machine. I feel that this problem should be dealt with at once and I put it to the Government not by way of criticism—I am not raising the question whether the Government might not have done more in the ordinary way—that here is a fundamental problem that has become urgent and that should be dealt with as suggested in the motion.
The Minister for Lands rose.
