I move:
That in view of the failure of the use of compulsion in regard to the language revival to appreciably further the objective of making the Irish language the spoken language of the people, and of the apparent growing disquiet and dissatisfaction among responsible authorities and among parents and pupils alike about compulsory methods, Dáil Éireann is of opinion that the Government should seek by means of a public referendum to ascertain whether a majority of the people would favour the replacement of compulsory methods, where used in the attempted revival of the language, by voluntary schemes for its encouragement.
This motion is moved in the earnest belief that even if we do not achieve our main objective of having the present methods of the attempted language revival altered, we shall have contributed something to the whole question of the revival because, by having this debate, Deputies will have an opportunity of taking stock of what has been done, to see the position as it is, to justify the stands they have taken, to discuss the policies in which they believe and contribute, if we can, something towards changing the present system in whatever way we think it should be changed to further the revival of the language. In doing that we shall have achieved something.
I do not think there are any doubts in the minds of Deputies that the language movement over the past 40 years and the methods used to further the revival have been a complete failure. On all sides we have disquiet and dissatisfaction amongst people who are interested, amongst the responsible authorities, amongst the parents and the pupils, about compulsory methods. I hope to be able to substantiate the points included in our motion—that there is disquiet and dissatisfaction on a very wide scale.
One of the difficulties which each incoming generation has to face is the attempt by their predecessors to impose their will on their successors. This happens in medicine, in architecture, in engineering and in most of the professions; it happens probably more than anywhere else in politics. In saying that I wish to make it quite clear that I am fully conscious of the fact that the attempts made by our predecessors to revive the language were made with the express intention of trying to carry out what they believed to be a great ideal for our society.
I think, however, that they must reconcile themselves to the fact that their 40 years of effort have been largely fruitless. I do not believe that it is possible to revive the language in our present circumstances as the vernacular of the people. I think the only thing that can be done is, possibly, to preserve it and perhaps extend it gradually in the future. I get no particular satisfaction from the realisation that in the effort to achieve the main objectives of our predecessors—which, as I see them, were the end of Partition, the revival of the language and to create a prosperous society in which there would be social justice for all—we have not been successful. That is, to me, a sad thought.
I believe that we have failed to achieve any one of these objectives and I believe that that failure, to a considerable extent, is due to the fact that these three factors were inevitably interwoven in many ways. There was an economic factor in the question of the revival of the language and I think that these other political considerations which were not taken into account by our political leaders at the time, by the idealists who were anxious to achieve the most desirable objective of all, the creation of an Irish-speaking united Ireland, were the cause of our failure. I think that one ideal conflicted with the other in the particular circumstances in which we found ourselves. I think our leaders mistook the ideal for the reality.
They forgot the fact that, as a result of occupation for some centuries, our people had become practically completely English-speaking. Their task therefore was a phenomenal one. It was an almost impossible task and I do not think it was because of any particular lack of zeal on their part that they failed. I think that, faced with the reality of trying to get 3,000,000 people who spoke English to conduct their business, their home affairs, their religious duties and their political activities through the medium of the Irish language, to expect them voluntarily to accept the upheaval in their private, personal and public lives which that would entail, was expecting too much. They gave the majority of the people the credit for having their own ideas, for having their own sense of intense patriotism or nationalism or anything you like. In that, I think they made grave miscalculations.
I believe the people might voluntarily learn the language. They decided they would not depend on this voluntary factor. They were right there but they were wrong when they decided that the correct method was to try to compel the people by various ways—sanctions, bribes, outright compulsion—to learn the language.
In my view, no matter which way you tried in the then circumstances, the language could not have been revived as the vernacular of our people no matter who attempted it and no matter what methods they used. To maintain and gradually to extend it was probably the only reasonably attainable objective.
We must recall that at that time one-fourth of our people did not want even the physical unity of the country and still do not want it, with an English-speaking Ireland. Of the three-quarters who did want physical unity, only a tiny minority of that three-quarters spoke fluent Irish. Therefore, that must be considered as one of the artificial impediments which those people who wanted to have a united Ireland were themselves attempting to create against the reality of reuniting the country.
Whatever chance there was of our achieving unity with our Northern fellow-Irishmen in a united English-speaking Ireland, it seems transparently clear that there could be no hope whatsoever of achieving the unity of our country in a predominantly Irish-speaking society.
It would seem reasonable for our fellow-Irishmen in the North to feel they would suffer ultimately the extinction of their cultures as they knew them by this preponderating part of the community speaking a language which they did not understand. That, in association with their other objections on the religious grounds, seems to add to the difficulties of the ending of Partition. Consequently, it does not seem that a sufficiently serious consideration was given to the whole matter at that time.
It is conceivable that one might have had a predominantly Irish-speaking Republic in this part of the country but a united Irish-speaking society seems to be an unachievable objective. It has been said, in regard to this question of 3,000,000 of our people speaking English, that that is one of the best arguments for compulsory methods for reviving the language, the idea being that because we learned English compulsorily we would learn Irish compulsorily.
The fallacy there lies in the fact that we learned English primarily because it meant an escape from poverty and depression, an opportunity to get out of the country and to get into a society in which it might be possible for us to earn a living at that time. That pertains to quite a considerable extent still, to my knowledge of the Gaeltacht areas in the West of Ireland. I know of many people whose attitude is: "I want to learn English. It is the only way I can get a job."
Anybody who has read the figures —to which I shall refer later—of the depopulation of the Gaeltacht areas, particularly of the Western Gaeltacht, must have a certain sympathy with these people because they were not taught English so that they would be able to earn their living more easily in London where they have had to find work in the sewers, on road works, in underground tunnels, and in various other places as unskilled navvies and labourers.
That is not fiction. That is not a creation of my own imagination. It has happened in the case of a man with whom I have very close association in relation to his son, a secondary schoolboy who knew no English in the Gaeltacht. He went to London and, in order to start getting any kind of labouring work, he was humiliated to find he had to start learning English first. His father is an enthusiast. He is a member of the Gaeltacht and a great believer in the language. He is very bitter because his son was placed in that position.
It seems, therefore, that the economic factor enters into the question of the revival policy. If some attempt had been made—I think that is the third factor—for the creation of prosperity, if some more effective attempt had been made to stem emigration, to provide employment on a large scale and to facilitate people to remain in rural Ireland and, in particular, in the Gaeltacht areas, it is conceivable that we might have been able to retain a greater pool of the spoken language and from that those of us who live on the East side might gradually have been able to learn to speak the language.