I move:
That Seanad Éireann takes note of the Action Plan for Irish 1983-1986, published by Bord na Gaeilge, and calls for the setting up of an all-party Oireachtas Committee to consider that Plan, to review the present condition of the language both in the Gaeltacht and outside it, and to make recommendations to the Government on an Irish language policy for the future.
Ag cur tús leis an díospóireacht seo ar staid na Gaeilge faoi láthair agus ar a bhfuil i ndán di amach anseo, is gá dhá shliocht gearra a lua as an Plean Gníomhaíochta don Ghaeilge 1983-86 ó Bhord na Gaeilge. Is achoimrí iad sin ar an dhá phointe bunúsacha ar a gcaithfimid áird a thabhairt sa díospóireacht seo agus a chaithfidh a bheith mar threoir againn san Oireachtas as seo amach. Is firinní soiléire an dá phointe agus dá bhrí sin ní mór iad a dheimhniú agus a thuiscint.
Ina bhfocail scoir leis an achoimre ar an bPlean Gníomhaíochta don Ghaeilge luann Bord na Gaeilge go soiléir mhórtabháil atá orainn sna habairtí seo. Deireann siad: "Ní féidir ach le treallús láidir daingean an Ghaeilge a athbheochan. De bharr an meathlú atá ar an teanga sa Ghaeltacht faoi láthair b'fhéidir go mbeidh sé ro-mhall pleanáil a dhéanamh i gceann deich mbliana. Ní mór an deis a thapú láithreach."
Tríd an tuarascáil ar fad deireann Bord na Gaeilge arís agus arís eile go bhfuil an Ghaeilge mar theanga phobail i gcontúirt mhór faoi láthair agus gur ag dul in olcas atá an scéal. Léiríonn an bord go bhfuil géar-ghá le cinnireacht mar riachtanas bunúsach chun go mairfidh agus go leathnóidh an teanga i ngnáth-úsáid.
Throughout their report Bord na Gaeilge emphasise again and again that the present position of Irish as a community language is a precarious one and that the situation is worsening rapidly. The bord point to the predominant requirement of leadership as an essential prerequisite to the long-run survival and growth of the language in common usage. On page four of their report the bord state quite clearly that "an essential element of any properly promoted language planning operation is public leadership — and the personal example of political leaders would be vital to the success of the plan".
The two brief quotations from the plan which I have used describe the two most fundamental truths which we must together accept during this debate. First, we do not have much time in which to act if we are to ensure the survival of Irish as a spoken, living language on a sufficient scale to provide a basis for its wider revival and usage. Secondly, the primary responsibility for the survival and revival of Irish rests with politicians, with the Oireachtas.
I think it would be useful to describe briefly the reasoning and general attitude of the four signatories of the motion before us. Last year, two of the signatories, together with some other Senators, had informal discussions about the serious condition of the language at present and about how we might take an initiative to bring the language question back into the centre of public affairs. Unfortunately a general election intervened at the end of last year to interrupt our discussions, but then, as now, we saw an all-party approach as being central to the possibility of success of such an initiative. In the spring of this year we decided to revive our initiative by involving a member of each political grouping in the Seanad in the preparation of an agreed motion for debate, which motion is now before us.
Each of the signatories to this motion believes strongly in the all-party approach which we have adopted. The position of the language now is so precarious and the task which lies ahead so great that there is no room or time for partisan party attitudes to predominate our discussions.
If we look back over the history of our State each political group in the Oireachtas can point to high points and low points in the performance of the other political groups in relation to language policy. We could spend the whole of this debate in analysis of the past and in pointing the finger at one another's successes and failures or at the successes and failures of the Irish language organisations themselves, but this is not the intention behind the motion before us. We must, of course, learn the lessons of the past in relation to language policy, as our work proceeds in the coming months and years, and in a calm, analytical, non-partisan way. Today our task is to make a commitment to the future of the language, in unity, so that the word goes out clearly that Oireachtas Éireann is committed to the revival of Irish and is taking concrete steps to fulfil that commitment by setting up an all-party committee on the subject.
Our approach today, then, is based on a recognition that the Irish language is in a fragile condition and that the duty of politicians who care for its future is to create a consensus for progress. That consensus must transcend all political groups so that the revival of Irish is seen for what it is — a matter of vital national interest in the pursuit of which we all have a part to play.
All-party consensus is required for another reason. In this, as in all democracies, Governments change. If we are to secure continuity of policy in relation to Irish over the medium to long term it is necessary that we create a consensus on what that policy should be so that progress is not impeded by dramatic policy shifts which are grounded in pragmatism rather than genuine concern for the language. I do not point any finger in this regard and I do not even suggest that such events are likely to occur in the future on the part of any political party. Nevertheless, the language issue is so important and its state so precarious that, it seems to me, it is vital that we create a realistic, hard-headed consensus of approach at Oireachtas level which will not be set aside no matter who will form the Government in the years ahead.
We do not have great experience in the Oireachtas of all-party committees, nor can we predict whether the range of committees recently created to review policies in a number of economic and social areas will have useful results or whether they will break down along party lines. Time will tell in these cases, but I believe it will be possible to create consensus in the proposed all-party committee on Irish, not least because all of us are aware that time is not on our side and that our duty to the language at this time of crisis in its existence does not permit of partisanship.
These thoughts are deeply ingrained in the minds of the signatories to this motion. Let me add a personal experience which has helped me to understand how we should approach our task.
As Senators may know, I have been a member of the European Parliament since March last. In the same month I became a member of the Parliament's Inter-Group on Minority Languages and Cultures, which is in effect an all-party committee of members committed to the survival and revival of the Community's many lesser-used languages and their associated cultures.
There are two things in particular to note about this committee and their work. The first is that they represent a widespread recognition in the Community that the death of any of the some 25 lesser-used languages in the member states would represent a serious blow to the diverse quality of European culture. For this reason the Community this year, for the first time, is spending money on the promotion and development of these threatened languages.
The money being spent this year, 100,000 ecu, is relatively small but it is significant of the commitment of the Community to lesser-used languages that money is being spent in this way in the middle of a severe economic crisis. It is, I believe, an example to us here in this regard.
The second feature of note in relation to the Parliament's Committee on Minority Languages is their working methodology. The committee comprise representatives of all political groups and of most member states. Despite the diversity of ideological opinion which exists in the committee, and despite the different degrees of political and cultural importance of minority languages in the member states represented, the committee work on the basis of seeking out objectively correct policies. They seek to make their decisions on the basis of objective analysis and to set aside national and ideological requirements as far as possible. This approach is adopted in recognition of the fact that the task is so great and the available time-scale so short, that the search for a hard-nosed consensus is essential at this time. This is an approach to their work which I would earnestly commend to the proposed Oireachtas committee.
Finally, in relation to the European Community, I am pleased to say that there is now a real prospect that the proposed European Bureau for Minority Languages and Cultures will be sited in Dublin before very long.
There is one other general point which I wish to make in relation to the motion before us. Our debate today gives us the opportunity to show our solidarity with the cause of the Irish language and with all those who are working for its revival and development. That is very important, because I sometimes feel a sense of isolation on the part of Irish language organisations from the mainstream of Irish public life. Despite the fact that successive Governments have helped to create and fund a set of economic and cultural institutions devoted to language revival, there is a sense of feeling among language activists that these sometimes represent State lip-service to Irish rather than vital instruments of a coherent language revival policy.
I cannot say that these activists and organisations are wrong to feel this way. Experience over recent decades would suggest that the revival of Irish has slipped down the list of priorities in public life in a way which is alarming. This point is put rather charitably in the Bord na Gaeilge plan, which States:
It is widely perceived that in recent times the State has drifted towards a policy of relative neutrality in matters of language policy.... A passive or arms length policy by the State towards Irish as a minority language in a system in which English is dominant, is not merely neutral but negative.
These comments summarise the concern of Irish language activists and organisations when they look at the role of the State in recent years. They are right to express these concerns and it is understandable that they feel a sense of isolation. One of our primary tasks today, therefore, is to begin to reverse any such feelings of isolation which exist. We can begin to do so by expressing our solidarity with the language, its organisations and its activists and by going on in the period ahead to express that solidarity in more concrete terms in the work of the all-party committee. What we are seeking to build today, however, is not just a limited show of solidarity based on those Senators whose facility in and commitment to Irish are proven. What we are seeking to achieve is a consensus to act on the part of all Senators who accept the vital national and cultural significance of Irish, irrespective of their own levels of proficiency in it.
I am pleased to say that, while many Senators with fluent Irish will contribute to our debate today, so too will many — including myself — whose Irish is of moderate standard, as will many with no Irish at all. All that is required at this stage of our debate is a commitment to Irish and its associated culture and a willingness to explore the way forward.
It is appropriate at this stage of my contribution that I should try to offer an answer to a question which sometimes crops up in converstaion on the subject before us — why bother with Irish? Why not let it die and concentrate instead on fundamental economic and social issues which need urgent remedy?
In the first instance, of course, one must say that there is no contradiction between the objective of reviving the language and fulfilling economic and social objectives. For the last 30 years, if not longer, there has been no exceptional commitment to Irish on the part of the State, yet this has not helped us to deal in any coherent way with the economic and social problems which afflict us. In fact, I believe that our failure to achieve many of our economic, social and political objectives is mirrored in our failure to revive Irish and that the causes lie in our colonised past and post-colonised present.
I would go further to suggest, although I am not an historian or linguistic scholar or sociologist or anthropologist, that the decline of the language over several hundred years has had a demoralising effect on our national pschye, which has made us less capable than we might be of responding to economic, social and political challenges.
The reverse side of the coin is that if we set about reviving the language in a serious and thoughtful way now, we might unleash a creativity and energy which, in turn, would help us to come to grips with the many economic and social crises which we face. What we are talking about here is the quality of our culture and its ability to respond to challenge and change. Culture in this, its true sense, is "the social heritage of a community: the total body of material artefacts, of collective mental and spiritual artefacts and distinctive forms of behaviour created by a people and transmitted from generation to generation".
Culture therefore, as Colonel Eoghan O'Neill has said recently, is something transmitted, communicated and learned. It includes both ideas and things, and how they are conceived, made or used. This information is passed on language which is the basic element of culture.
But language is not simply a means of oral or written communication. It's form, in turn, conditions our ideas and ethical values as Wittgenstein pointed out, and helps us to analyse and act on what we see in a particular and special way. Irish culture thus defined rests, as O'Neill has said, primarily on the Irish language, because it was the language of the majority of the population until the last century. I would suggest that its continuing decline has de-energised and made less creative our entire society and has reinforced the demoralisation brought on by the wholesale emigration which accompanied it.
A clear commitment to Irish language revival, therefore, in addition to the intrinsic value which this would have for Irish culture would, in my view, release new energies, ideas and commitment over the whole range of our economic and social life. This is my answer to those who would question the value of Irish in a society which is so obviously beset by so many problems of an economic and social nature, all of which need urgent attention. My case in short, however badly I may put it, is that serious efforts to revive the language, far from diverting us from dealing with the long-running sores of unemployment, low production us from dealing with the long-running sores of unemployment, low production and poverty, may well revive a sense of national purpose without which little can be achieved.
It could also be argued that attempts to develop more widespread usage of the Irish language would have an adverse effect on progress towards a political settlement between the two political traditions on the island and that, therefore, the Irish language should be set aside in the interest of a greater good. This position ignores two fundamental realities. First, it ignores the fact that the majority of the people of Northern Ireland have a Gaelic cultural background, with Gaelic as their ancestral language. Linked with this is the reality that Ulster Protestants played an immensely important role in the revival of the Irish language from about 1790 onwards in the industrial North.
Secondly, it ignores the fact that any settlement between the traditions of this island must be based on an acceptance of diverse cultural streams within a commonly accepted social and political framework. Surely, whatever settlement eventually emerges will reflect the diversity of social, cultural and political opinion on the island and will accord tolerance and support to diverse cultural priorities.
In truth it can be said that the revival of Irish poses no greater threat to the cultural priorities of Ulster Protestants than it does to the cultural priorities of the 39 per cent of the people in the Republic who, according to a recent MRBI survey, would not like to see Irish more widely used in everyday life in the South. In fact, of course, it poses no threat to either. Rather, failure to make progress towards a wider use of Irish diminishes us all, while at the same time generating disenchantment and resentment among those to whom Irish is a matter of vital interest and concern.
Indeed, as Eoghan O'Neill has said again, history provides innumerable examples of tension, instability or conflict, where cultures have been ignored or suppressed, or where the existence of a particular cultural distinctiveness does not receive due recognition within a community or between communities.
We have seen the results of such suppression in Northern Ireland. It would be lamentable if new antagonisms were to be generated in the South in the future between those who are concerned at the precarious position of Irish and a State which refuses to go beyond lip-service. But we have not reached that point yet and hopefully we will be wise enough to take steps to avoid it.
In its Action Plan, Bord na Gaeilge indicate that their medium-term strategy involves discernible movement towards a bilingual society by the year 2000. This is clearly an acceptable and achievable objective, given political will at the level of the State itself.
The recent MRBI survey indicated that 53 per cent of the population favoured a more widespread usage of Irish in everyday life and that is a hopeful baseline from which to begin. It is no longer clear to me, however, and it has not been for at least two decades now, whether successive Governments and politicians, including myself, are committed to a bilingual society in any serious way. I have no sense that such an objective has been at the centre of Government priorities during that time, or indeed that the objective of a bilingual society has been on Government agendas at all.
The time has come, therefore, for all of us in all parties to ask ourselves honestly what do we wish to see done in relation to Irish. Let us together take off the cloak of hypocrisy which has covered our positions in recent decades and let us be honest with ourselves and with the people. If we do not care about Irish, if we are prepared to see it die, let us say so. Then at least people can see where we stand and they can make up their minds about us and about the language, unfettered by verbal hypocrisy.
If, on the other hand we care, then let us together start making the decisions which are necessary, not only to move towards a bilingual society, but to secure the very survival of the language itself.
I now turn briefly to some of the principal policy objectives which I see as being important in the period immediately ahead. I do not propose to deal with all the recommendations and suggestions contained in the Bord na Gaeilge plan, even though I believe strongly that almost all of these are worthy of immense attention.
I would like to distinguish four areas where we must begin to make progress. The first is in relation to the Oireachtas itself. It is obvious from the speech which I have made, most of which has been in English, that my own fluency or level of facility in Irish is mixed, to put it mildly. I imagine that that is the case for most politicians in the Oireachtas. However, if we are serious about our business, each of us, with whatever facility in Irish we have, should seek to utilise it in our day-to-day business here. That at least gives a signal to the people that we are serious about it, that it is not something we pay lip service to on State occasions or occasions of public importance, but that we will try in our own ways to introduce it into our discussions and debates in the Oireachtas as frequently as we can. For my own part, I give that commitment, even though my feeble attempts today ran into difficulty when I could not read my script, because of the type size.
Therefore, it is important that the first thing we realise during our debate today is that we ourselves must give the lead. I sense a feeling of isolation among many of the people outside who are activitists in the cause of the Irish language, and that is understandable. We must reverse that by giving whatever we can ourselves to the language in terms of our own commitment in this institution here. It is important that we seek clarification from the Government about the role of public bodies generally in the revival and development of usage of the Irish language. It is discernible that the usage of Irish in public bodies has diminished over the last few decades, although Bord na Gaeilge are now involved in a process of trying to reverse that trend by setting up special programmes inside State bodies of all kinds at local and national level so that there is greater usage of Irish and so that there is greater access and facility given to people with Irish when they seek to do business with these semi-State and other public bodies.
I would like to see the Government come in behind Bord na Gaeilge in this attempt. I am sure that would be their intention. We have to do this and we have to be clear about precisely the rights of Irish language speakers in relation to public bodies. That is another element of the commitment which the State must make in terms of its own operations in conducting its own business.
Secondly, it is clear from the Bord na Gaeilge plan, and from all that has been said by all kinds of people, that an essential prerequisite to the survival of Irish, its usage and growth towards a bilingual society depend absolutely on the survival of the Gaeltacht.
With your permission, a Chathaoirleach, I should like to quote some comments from the Bord na Gaeilge plan which seem to me to be apposite and should be put on the record of the House. On page 2 of the plan the board say:
A major threat to the development of this type of bilingual community would be the continuing decline of the Gaeltacht. It will not be possible to establish any kind of bilingualism in this country without the support of a significant ‘basic community'— in the Gaeltacht and elsewhere — in which Irish is the principal language or, at least, a language of major significance in daily life. For the past 150 years this ‘basic community' has been declining steadily in the Gaeltacht. In 1891, for example, 30 years before the foundation of the State, about 19% of the population in those counties now forming the Republic of Ireland claimed to be Irish speakers. The great majority were native speakers in Gaeltacht areas. Today, some 60 years after the foundation of the State, only c. 1% of our population can be said to be native speakers using Irish as their normal day-to-day language in Gaeltacht areas. These figures lead inevitably to the conclusion that there is very little hope indeed that Irish will survive as a community language in the Gaeltacht beyond the end of the century.
Accordingly, it must be a first and fundamental part of any bilingual policy to arrest the decline of Irish as a community language in the Gaeltacht.
That excerpt from the plan states in the starkest possible way that time is running out for the future of Irish in the Gaeltacht. The arrest of the decline in the language there must be a principal priority in terms of Irish language policy.
The board go on to indicate a series of influences which have led to this situation to which I will refer briefly. The daily impact of a television service transmitting perhaps 95 per cent of its programme content in English is, of course, a disgrace. It also seems to me to be very much against the spirit of the legislation which led to the establishment of RTE. I say this without hypocrisy. RTE must be told that the rights of Irish language speakers have got to be met in the terms of the programming policy, not only in the context of RTE 1 and 2 programming, but hopefully as rapidly as possible in the creation of an all-Irish language television station such as the Welsh language station they have in Wales.
I do not think we can underestimate the effect of pumping through television enormous quantities of English language programmes into Gaeltacht areas. It is very obvious that there is an immense hunger for Irish language television programmes in these areas. Anybody who visits the Gaeltacht and sees the way in which people seek out Irish language programmes and watch them in massive numbers when they are available knows this. The Government have a duty to make it clear to RTE that the very low level of existing Irish language programming is unacceptable, intolerable and is, indeed, a denial of the rights of those to whom Irish is a first language or at least a language which they use in their everyday lives.
The board also point to the fact that public bodies conduct their business predominantly through English in Gaeltacht areas. I am referring in particular to local authorities and health boards. This is not the case with Údarás na Gaeltachta, but it is true that other agencies make no attempt to see to it that business with people from the Gaeltacht is conducted through Irish in the way the Gaeltacht people would like to have it done.
It is clear too that the linguistic effects of industrialisation have made their impact in the Gaeltacht areas. The inflow of English-speaking residents, either following industry or for other reasons, has had an effect too. We need urgently policies and commitments which will seek to reverse the impact which these influences are having on the Gaeltacht areas and which will seek to regenerate the feeling among Gaeltacht people that the State is behind them in their efforts to hold on to their living language.
Currently it is important for me to point to the reality in relation to education. Obviously, education is a vital means through which we would seek to move towards a bilingual society. However, despite the fact that the State is nominally committed to the achievement of this objective, in recent decades we have witnessed a continual decline in the status and quality of Irish in the educational system. Here again we have a clear contradiction between the theoretical commitment of the State to bilingualism and the practice which it condones and indeed encourages.
I should like to quote the concluding remarks in an article by Séamas Ó Buachalla on pages 29 and 30 of The Crane Bag. His comments summarise the present position very adequately and effectively indeed, and point to the urgent necessity for a revamping of policy in education relating to Irish. He says:
The substantial changes in the status of Irish within the educational system during the past two decades have been catalysed and influenced by a number of complex interacting factors. The policies which sought to modernise and reorientate the economic system in the late fifties appeared to demand an attitudinal shift which would regard attachment to established cultural values as a hindrance. The Irish language was seen within the educational system as a symbol and central element of that culture. Political developments during the seventies centering on Northern Ireland may have accelerated this process. In the educational reforms of the sixties policies of expansion and curricular renewal were implemented which liberated the system from the inertial rigidity characterising it for four decades. When some research findings offered evidence that policy on the Irish language needed rethinking, it became quite convenient to offload on the language policy all the inadequacies of the educational system. The reality of course is that educational policy in the four decades after independence was determined more by the sensitivity surrounding Church-State relations rather than by the demands of language revival.
He goes on to make various other points, but I will quote his conclusion where he said:
Have we reached the stage when any integrated plan designed to link the educational system and society at large in a realistic policy of bilingualism, may come too late? There is ample evidence to indicate that the Irish language within the school system is in a weak condition; its status is no better now than it was in the early years of the century.
In looking at education there are a number of things which seem to me to be of fundamental importance. First of all, we must begin to get back to the stage where teachers who teach Irish are competent to do so. I am afraid in many cases this is not the case at present. We need to review the programmes for teachers of Irish. We need to review the method of access to teacher-training for Irish teachers, and we need to ensure as rapidly as possible that when we say we are teaching Irish in school we are doing so with teachers who are competent in this area. Far too often nowdays, particularly at second level education, the reality is that Irish is being taught by people who do not know it themselves. Of course, that washes off on the pupils and it leads to the kind of consequences which we have seen in terms of output from education with facility in the language.
It is important too that we begin to move towards the expansion of all-Irish naí-scoileanna, which in my experience have proven highly acceptable and successful. We need, in other words, to isolate key areas of education where we are failing to get across the Irish language in an effective way despite the many years which most pupils spend in school. I would isolate two things in particular: the importance of teacher training, including in-service training; and, secondly, the development of naí-scoileanna at age four to seven. Needless to say, the welcome trend, in recent years towards the development of all-Irish schools, particularly at primary level, should be encouraged, developed and funded as far as possible. What one is looking for now is positive discrimination in favour of the Irish language.
I wish to refer now to another set of proposals in the Bord na Gaeilge plan which seems to be among the priorities, that is, the need to create networks and centres at community level where people outside the Gaeltacht areas with a facility in Irish and who want to use it can meet. One of the big problems in Dublin is that there are very few places where people can meet who wish to speak Irish and make an effort to improve their knowledge of it. This proposal should be pursued as rapidly as resources allow. Let us also bear in mind that in the interim there is no reason why existing resources cannot be utilised to fulfil some of the purposes behind this proposal.
It is important that we get more people on the ground to help activate those who wish to become more fluent in Irish or who wish to come to grips with Irish for the first time. I do not think we are talking about large resources here. We are talking about some manpower resources and some travelling expenses. There is no reason why we cannot, by some means or other, provide more people to help motivate those interested in the language, particularly those parents in the vicinity of Irish language schools who are capable of being easily motivated, given the right environment and resources.
Finally, I would like to make one point in relation to staffing, particularly in relation to Bord na Gaeilge, where there is a genuine staffing problem at middle rank level. There is a shortage of executive level staff. This will have the effect of slowing down the ability of the board to get on with their work. I would urge the Minister to have a look at this aspect as urgently as possible. I am aware of the difficulties associated with the Government's manpower policy, but if this commitment to the Irish language means anything we have to be able to make special cases in relation to it and to discriminate in its favour.
I recommend that we set up this all-party committee whose task will be to get down to the serious business of analysing policy in detail and monitoring the performance of successive Governments in the years ahead. It is regrettable that I have not been able to speak in Irish here today. I had hoped some months ago that I might have come to a level of fluency which would have allowed me to do so, but it is important that those of us who are committed to Irish — despite the fact that we are not fluent in it — should be prepared to stand and say "Yes, we believe in this language and want to see it revived and developed, and we will do all in our power to help it". It is also obvious that we have a responsibility, individually, to seek to become more fluent in Irish and I hope to achieve that aim some time in the future.
