I should like to refer to some matters that I intended to mention on the Second Stage if the Minister was present. When the Appropriation Bill was before us in August last I added my voice to certain representations which were made to the Government with a view to having some additional assistance given to the Gaelic Theatre in Galway. I should like to express my appreciation of the action that the Minister has since taken by giving additional assistance to that body. While the additional assistance is not as much as I would have liked, I think it is as much as I would have expected, and that good results will follow from it. There is no doubt that the part that can be played at Galway in the national work of saving and restoring the Irish language is much greater than can be played at any other place. At any rate work can be done there which cannot well be done anywhere else. In Galway we have the only substantial urban area in which a very large proportion of the inhabitants know and actually speak the Irish language. An institution like the Gaelic Theatre can do work there that no similar institution, no matter how well financed, could well do elsewhere, because in Galway you can have a natural audience—not an audience of students of the language, but an audience of people who go to see an entertainment and judge it as such an entertainment would normally be judged. Since the Gaelic Theatre was established. I believe that something like 70 plays have been produced. Quite an appreciable number of original plays have been written for the theatre and produced in the national language, and a great number of foreign plays have been translated and played there. I am not at all in favour of giving large sums of money to any such institution, because if too much public money is provided there may be a tendency to slack, and to rely on the help that comes from the State, instead of considering the audiences and the resources that can be tapped locally. Ultimately I hope the Government will give some more money to the Galway Gaelic Theatre, so that there may be established there a permanent company of professional actors, whose efforts might be supplemented by amateurs and part-time actors. I think really satisfactory work can only be done if the main part of the acting is done by professionals. It is true that amateurs may play certain parts exceedingly well, but for repertory work it takes actors with about five years constant acting behind them to ensure that every performance will be well done. If the Galway Gaelic Theatre is gradually allowed to grow into an institution with its own body of permanent professional actors, I believe the effect on the work of reviving and restoring the national language will be very great indeed. It will not only have its effect locally on play-goers, but it will stimulate the production of literature. It will provide an immediate outlet for the writer who has capabilities and gifts.
Moreover, the existence of a permanent company will enable a dramatist to do better work than if he has to write without particular actors and actresses in mind. He will get from the existence of a permanent company some of the advantages that an artist gets from working from a model. And when a vigorous dramatic literature takes its rise there you will find that the growth of other branches of Irish literature will be stimulated. So that, while I express my appreciation of the increase the Minister is giving and while, as I say, it was as much as I expected he would do, I hope that the Government will look at this institution with an appraising, benevolent eye, and that as development justifies it they will make some additional grant available so that there may be steady growth and steady progress, but, of course, always on such a scale and on such a basis that initiative and self-dependence will not be sapped.
I would also like to say that I think the Government and, in particular the Minister for Education, might consider whether in Dublin the moneys that are being expended for drama in Irish might not be expended in a somewhat different way. I do not want to condemn the work that is being done, but I do think that the problem in Dublin is a different problem from that of Galway. We must consider here chiefly the student audience, and very largely an audience of senior school children. I do not know whether it would not be a good thing if the Government, and particularly the Department of Education, were to consider the establishment in Dublin of a Gaelic theatre for children. A great deal is being done to encourage school drama. What is being done is extremely good in certain respects. It teaches the children who have been taught the language to use it in a natural way. It stimulates interest; but, on the other hand, if you have one school company looking at a performance by another school company they are naturally looking at a performance that cannot be perfect. They have no really good model that they may imitate themselves unconsciously: that they might go to see as part of their school attendance, just as they go to concerts conducted by the Army band. I have seen whole bodies of school children accompanied, by their teachers, go into the Mansion House to hear performances of music by the Army band. They went there as part of their school day. I do not know whether it would not be possible and desirable to have in Dublin a theatre manned by professional actors and actresses specialising in Irish plays of interest to children which the children from all the senior classes might go to once a quarter or once in the half-year as part of their school instruction. The dramatic work in school plays would be greatly improved by that. It is not so much that the children would consciously appreciate the better technique, but that from observation they would incline to model themselves on better work. If you had competent professional players the children, from hearing Irish spoken naturally in all sorts of circumstances, would gain enormously. It would be an important auxiliary to the actual instruction given in the schools. The actors engaged on that work might also do work for adults and so on in the evenings and in that way put the whole thing on a new basis.
In any case, it seems to me that it would be a kind of supplement to the work that is being done by Coiste na bPaíste which sends children from Dublin for a holiday to the Gaeltacht. That work is very useful and valuable, and it is capable of extension. But there are definite limits to the extension which is possible. Not only are there limits because of the question of funds and because it is financially impossible to send all the children from Dublin to the Gaeltacht, but also because there is not sufficient Gaeltacht there to send them to. If the work were extended, and if funds were found to extend it beyond certain limits, there is the danger that it might do a great deal of damage, because in time it might swamp out the Gaeltacht. The work that is being done is valuable, but it can only affect a minority of children. All sorts of ways, it seems to me, will have to be thought out for giving corresponding benefits to other children if a great deal of the work that is being done for the language is not to go to waste. Therefore, I would like that that aspect of the matter which I have mentioned should be considered.
I would like to refer again to a matter that I previously dealt with. That is the question of simple, cheap "talkies" in Irish for school exhibition. I think that also might be considered. These could be used in the rural areas where the children are taught by teachers who, it may be, learned Irish well but who are in isolated districts and do not use it—whose Irish tends to get somewhat rusty and cannot be kept quite fresh all the time. In any case, it is not good enough for children to hear only one voice speaking the language. I believe that at a very moderate rate simple little comedies, lasting say, a quarter of an hour, could be prepared as "talkies" and shown by a portable apparatus in country schools. At any rate, I would like, as the Minister has been so good as to make a concession in one respect, that this other development should be considered.
Finally, I should like to say that it is perfectly clear that one cannot get the work that requires to be done for the Irish language in the educational system carried out in the primary and secondary schools alone. I think that there must be development in the Universities. Certain steps have been adopted and certain developments have taken place, but I think the process needs to be continuous. In Galway there are certain lecturers who give their lectures in Irish. They have their effect not only on the students who attend the lectures but on the general atmosphere of the place. Their work produces results that extend beyond the immediate bounds of the University or the University body. Now in Dublin, for example, that development has not begun. In Galway it ought not to be allowed to stop at the point that has been reached. In University College, Dublin, if the Government could arrange it, I think that some start ought to be made in the use of Irish as a medium of instruction. Progress naturally must be slow. It cannot be forced. You have to recognise the existing position both as regards the staff and the student body, and apart altogether from that there is the question of finding the right personnel to undertake the new type of work. I think that suitable personnel will only be found very slowly. If any of the colleges of the National University felt that money was available, or would be made available by the Government when suitable personnel appeared, or could be discovered, then I think we would have development. I should like to say this for the colleges of the National that they are not importunate, that they do not clamour at the door of the Department of Finance as some other institutions do, and, therefore, they would be quite liable to let opportunities of securing personnel and making development slip rather than approach the Government.
Consequently I feel, that the Government has a responsibility in this matter for making it understood that they desire development, and that as soon as development can properly take place they are prepared to assist it. There has been, in more colleges than one, an increase compared with the old days in the staff which is actually engaged in teaching the Irish language, apart from teaching through it. People with old-fashioned ideas may think that quite enough has been done, but I fancy in view of the struggle that is taking place and the efforts that require to be made, we are far from having gone far enough, and that additional staff could be employed with great effect and great utility. It may be said, of course, that the colleges are autonomous, but they are national bodies and are in touch with national feeling and national sentiment. I believe myself that if they understand that adequate help will be available from the Government they will move ahead.
I think it is important that the Government should make it understood that they will give that help, because if the Universities do not advance with the schools then a great deal of the work that has actually been done in the schools is going to be partially destroyed. It is not satisfactory that students should go through a secondary school, getting instruction through the medium of Irish, and having a certain spirit instilled into them, and that when they go to the University in Dublin none of them should receive instruction through Irish. I do not think that for a long time more than a minority can receive instruction through Irish, but at any rate the position ought not to be that none of them should receive it. If we do not help the Universities and help to develop the work that is being done in the schools then, as I say, a great deal of that work will be wasted. To some extent also development in the schools will be crippled because it is from the Universities the secondary schools get their teachers, and you will not get that even, all round development that might be secured if you have not the Universities advancing in the actual use of Irish. I am not saying that by way of criticism at all. I think that great progress has been made as compared with the old position. I think that progress has to be continuous in this particular matter, and that there has to be continual alertness and continual adjustment.
