When I concluded on this Estimate before questions I was urging on the Minister the necessity for protecting the area of land which lies between the shore road and the sea throughout Gaeltacht areas, if necessary by acquisition on the equitable terms to the present owners of leaving it open to the Department of Lands to lease or let the land back to the original owners for agricultural use but primarily to ensure that the amenities of the whole area will not be irretrievably destroyed by the acquisition of this land in small parcels by persons at home and abroad coming here and building all sorts of structures between the road and the sea, as many of the scenic roads in Gaeltacht areas closely adjoin the seashore.
The Department of the Gaeltacht is, of course, primarily concerned with the preservation of the Gaeltacht as we knew it 40 years ago. It is the source of the language and the living spring without which the language must necessarily die. I have watched in my life-time the diminution of that spring. I remember in Donegal when I first went there as a student to the College at Cloughaneely Irish was the vernacular language from Falcarragh all round the west and from there down to the Rosses and Dungloe. The area of the Gaeltacht in that district where Irish is the vernacular has fallen back by about 20 miles. I doubt if it would be true to say that Irish was the vernacular east of Dunlewey and the Rosses today. The House ought to face the fact that while we are improving the tourist amenities of the Gaeltacht on the one hand, we are destroying what we pretend to be concerned to preserve on the other hand, because the arrival of tourists in the Gaeltacht is finally killing the language as a spoken language. That is a dilemma which the Department has to face. I should be glad to hear the Minister's view about what the Department's attitude to this dilemma is.
Tourism is a queer thing. If ever there was a concrete example of the love of money being the root of all evil I cannot help thinking sometimes that tourism is the very personification of that biblical aphorism. I do not know if Deputies are familiar with the newly-developed tourist areas in Spain as compared with similar areas in Portugal. The area from Malaga to Gibraltar, the coastal area in Andalusia in Spain had a very special beauty and was preserved in a very special way. Within the last ten years, so short a time as that, that country has practically disappeared. There is now substituted for it in that area of Andalusia an international sub-culture of the most revolting character which is spreading like a cancer over an area which to Spain is much what the Gaeltacht is to Ireland. I compare with that the southern coast of Portugal and for reasons which it is not expedient or necessary to go into this strange rot of tourism has not penetrated there yet and so there survives in the South of Portugal the atmosphere of Portugal, the civilisation of Portugal, but not the money of international tourism. Some day we will have to ask ourselves— perhaps it is too late to ask the question now—are we resolved to sell everything for money. I can assure the Minister that the Gaeltacht contains an enviable sort of peace, "calm and untouched, remote from roar, where weary men may from their burdens cease on a still shore."
That is something the international jet set are prepared to pay a lot for now, quite oblivious of the fact that with their arrival the very thing they seek to purchase becomes irredeemably destroyed. I doubt if when the chips are down the Department of the Gaeltacht will prove strong enough to resist the influence of the love of money but I suggest that one of the steps they might take to protect the Gaeltacht in some measure from the worst variety of exploitation would be to ensure that at least that area immediately adjoining the seashore would be protected from promiscuous exploitation by people who care for nothing but the temporary enjoyment of amenities which they are quite prepared to destroy and then flit elsewhere leaving ruins behind them and perpetrating the same devastation in southern Portugal or some other part of the world as yet untouched by their unclean hands.
I should like the Minister to tell us what is being done in the Gaeltacht now under the Land Project. I remember being greatly abused by the former Deputy Bartley when he was the Parliamentary Secretary here at one time because I had charged the Land Project with the task of blasting the rocks in Connemara. The Leas-Cheann Comhairle may raise his eyebrows when I mention the Land Project in the context of the Estimate for the Department of the Gaeltacht but the Department of the Gaeltacht was established—I was present at its birth; I stood by its cradle—for the purpose of co-ordinating the activities of all the other State Departments in Gaeltacht areas. I should like to ask the Minister if that general co-ordinating power remains with his Department? The original objective was that the activities of local authorities, the Department of Local Government, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Education and every other Department would be co-ordinated into a joint development scheme which would preserve areas like The Rosses, West Cork, South Kerry and any other areas, which were included in the statutory definition of Gaeltacht for the purpose of the Department of the Gaeltacht. I should like to know if that co-ordinating function still subsists in the Minister's Department and if it does not it ought. I do not know whether the Minister is charged with telling me what the other Departments are doing to assist in the economic and social survival of the Gaeltacht. Perhaps the Minister would tell us, so that I may know whether I am within the rules of order in querying him. Does the Minister have any responsibility in that context?
