Joint Committee on Irish Language, the Gaeltacht and the Islands launches report

Chairperson of the Joint Committee, Catherine Connolly TD said: “One of the biggest challenges facing parents of children attending child care centres is to ensure that their children learn and develop their native language in all its fluency, richness and diversity, and the most important stage in a child’s life in this regard is the period between six months and five years of age, the period in which they attend pre-school child care services.”

Deputy Connolly added:“In this regard the child care centres operating in Gaeltacht areas face particular challenges in transmitting the Irish language, the language of the child and of the community, to the next generation; a challenge that is not faced by pre-school child care services operating outside the Gaeltacht areas.”

This report identifies these challenges and puts forward 25 recommendations to the Government to meet them.

• The Joint Committee recognises the importance and central role of immersion education in transmitting the Irish language to the next generation and it is urging the Government to promote immersion education both in and outside the Gaeltacht.
• The Joint Committee is urging the Government to recognise the central role of the pre-school child care services in the provision of immersion education and to recognise the special needs of the children attending pre-school child care services in Gaeltacht areas.
• The Joint Committee is urging the Government to ensure qualified carers are put on a par with primary school teachers in terms of salary, holidays, pensions and conditions of employment.
• The Joint Committee recognises that the State has a duty to provide all its services to the public bilingually and on the basis of complete equality and this is so in the case of the provision and support of pre-school child care services.  Accordingly, the Joint Committee is calling on the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, the Department of Education and Skills, and  TUSLA – An Gníomhaireacht um Leanaí agus an Teaghlach, and all other public bodies to ensure that they can conduct and that they do conduct all their business with child care centres in the working language of the centre in question, and especially so in ensuring that the inspector with responsibility for the centre is fluent in the working language of the centre.
• The Joint Committee hopes that the Government will read this report and the recommendations contained within it; recommendations which are based on the evidence which was brought before the Joint Committee during the course of its examination of this subject.

View a full copy of the report here.