Latest Data Shows Jump in Irish Speakers – Gaelic Medium Education Grows in Spite of the Hostility of Dublin Elites

Census data shows almost 1.66 million people, aged three years and over, were able to speak Irish in 2006 compared with 1.57 million in 2002. According to Census 2011, the number of people who declared they can speak Irish increased by 7.1 per cent since 2006. - Irish Times

The resilience of the Irish language is a thing to see. But those of us who fret about the future of the Celtic tongue in Ireland have good reason to do so.  Dublin bureaucrats victimize the language of the ancients with a thousand small cuts, day in and day out, whether it is in the guise of budget shortfalls or failure to implement policies aimed to benefit the Gaelic tongue or the Gaeltacht. 

Dublin’s actions, and inaction, consistently prove right the words of Seán Ó Cuirreáin, Ireland's First Language Commissioner.  Uttered shortly after his resignation in December 2013 in defiance of the failure the Irish government to support the Irish tongue,  Ó Cuirreáin’s statement reverberates: “ If you regard public administration as having two sides – the elected political masters who should decide on policy and the executive or administrative element (civil or public servants) who implement it, I was suggesting that there is a large cohort of people within the state sector (mainly senior civil servants) for whom the language has no importance nor is it anywhere on their agenda.  The civil servants, occasionally referred to as the permanent government, hold much sway and can set the agenda in their own way. While there are many who are favorable to Irish and concerned about the language’s future, there are many, many more who simply regard anything to do with Irish as a thorn in the administrative side.”

Which makes the latest data from the Department of Education and Skills all the more encouraging. Student registration at Ireland’s Gaelic-medium secondary schools has shown a increase during the 2015-2016 school term of 1% in spite of the Irish government’s failure to support the expansion of Gaelic-medium secondary education.

The shortfall between the demand for Irish-medium secondary schooling and the support the government is prepared to give recently prompted an outburst from Ireland’s President Michael Higgins. Higgens condemned the failure of the government to honor its responsibility to the Irish language.  Higgins was quoted questioning the goodwill of Government elites toward the Tongue and lashed out at Dublin for its failure to meet the public’s demand for Gaelic-medium secondary education. An issue that has surfaced in a number of communities around Ireland. Higgins sated: “It is clear that the demand exists for more Irish language secondary schools to give these children the opportunity to continue their education through the medium of Irish, and it is only right that they should be able to do so.” 

The Irish Times in an article highlighting the increase in the number of Gaelic secondary school placements for 2015-2016 comments on the spike in demand for Irish medium education throughout Ireland: “This increasing interest (in Irish-medium instruction) has also been recorded in wider society. Census data shows almost 1.66 million people, aged three years and over, were able to speak Irish in 2006 compared with 1.57 million in 2002. According to Census 2011, the number of people who declared they can speak Irish increased by 7.1 per cent since 2006.”

The Times article continued and addressed Dublin’s apparent hostility to the Celtic tongue and the beuracratic hurdles targetting Gaelic: “Despite this growth in interest, the Irish language education sector faces barriers that are unique to it in the context of the wider education sector.  About 8 per cent of primary schools now teach through the medium of Irish while secondary schools that teach in Irish account for about 6 per cent.  Campaigners have long argued the school selection process is skewed against those who wish to make a case for new Irish-medium post-primary schools on the basis that they cannot numerically compete with English-language schools……”

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/irish-medium-secondary-schooling-is-increasingly-popular-1.2893861

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