"You are not on the system at all..."

A Kafkaesque tale from 21st century Ireland!

Ciarán Ó Feinneadha is a respectable accountant, steady, reliable and usually unflappable. Like all people who interact with the Irish state in the National Language he experiences a fair amount of difficulty if not downright obstruction.

The Irish Language home page of
the Dept of Social Protection

Things like computer problems with diacritics. Why this is a problem is difficult to understand since most languages do have diacretics to a far larger extent that Irish. We have the síne fada (or l'accent aigu of French) which often alters the meaning of a word or it's absence makes a word meaningless. Take the name of the country Éire. Without the síne fada this the word "eire" means burden or encumberance. The male name Seán (from Norman French "Jean") becomes "old" when spelt "sean". One would imagine that country would take account of its official language when specifying equipment. 

Finding personnel with the ability to actually communicate in the language is another difficulty. Another problem faced is the inability of people to accept the given name or surname. All people who use the Irish (and correct form) of their surname have experienced questioning, "What's that in English?" I usually reply "Track" or "Trace" which is really on trend nowadays. (See Tearma.ie!)

These are everyday problems for the Irish speaker trying to excercise his constitutional rights to using the National Language which is the Official Language of the state. ("Ós í an Ghaeilge an teanga náisiúnta is í an phríomhtheanga oifigiúil í." - Since Irish is the National Language it is the principal official language! Alt 8.1 Bunreacht na hÉireann). 

Naturally many people get tired of the incessant trouble they experience in dealing with the state and as often as not revert to English in order to save time and bother. No doubt the also contributes to the retreat of the Irish speaking areas and the so-called lack of demand for services in Irish that the civil servants report. If you want to read about some of these cases you could do worse than looks up any of the reports from the Coimisinéir Teanga since the institution of that office. 

But back to Ciarán.

An Scéal seo ar Gaeltacht21: "An Gheall briste..."

He tells us on his facebook page that he has refrained from speaking publicly on the matter of the frequent failings of the state (Dept of Health & HSE) to consider, let alone serve, Irish speakers in the current pandemic. He has shown remarkable constraint since the Coimisnéir Teanga says that no less than 20% of all complaints received in the office during 2020 were related to the pandemic. "One in five complaints I received this year related to the health crisis," his recently published report states (Page 6).

The straw that broke the camels back for Ciarán was another State Department entirely - the Department of Social Protection. He starts by listing three irritating occasions where the state failed to serve him as a user of the First Official language of the state during July 2020 alone. then he goes on:

Ciarán Ó Feinneadha

"I needed to get a Public Services Card and in order to obtain that the Department of Social Protection had to confirm my birth certificate electronically. 

"My parents baptized me Ciarán Ó Feinneadha. In my discussions with the local Office I was told “You are not on the system” and “you are not on the system at all”. So on the registration system for birth certificates by the Irish government there is no ‘Ciarán Ó Feinneadha’. They have translated my surname into an English surname they have created for me to file my real name in the system. I was told on three occasions that they have done this for everyone who has an Irish surname. 

"The correct Irish version is still on the certificate itself but they have translated all our Irish surnames into English (if it is English) and have filed us in that English version only. So when they tried to confirm my birth certificate I was asked what the English version of my name was and of course I refused to invent one because it doesn't exist - I'm kind of ashamed to claim WARRIOR of course. So the local office couldn't find me in the system without the corrupted "English" version of the name under which I was filed, which I or my parents have never used. 

INCREDIBLE!

"Both my parents have passed away in recent years and I feel that this is a personal insult to them as well as to me and to all Gaels. As well as being abusive and rude - it appears that their (the Department's) anti-Irishness has taken away all human understanding."

Comments on this on his page range from incandescent indignation to "well what do you expect?"

My own comment as a taxpayer to this state since 1966 and still suffering this kind of disrespect is a very weary indignation and very little surprise.

• A personal apology has been made to Ciarán but a statement to Tuairisc.ie leaves many questions unanswered. Conradh na Gaeilge is seeking a meeting and a trawl through the records to find out how many other cases like this may occur. (see Article 5/8/2021)