20% complaints related to a lack of services through Irish during the pandemic.

 Leagan Gaeilge 

The statutory duty to provide a service in Irish does not depend on the particular situation involved, the priorities or resources of the public body.

An Coimisinéir Teanga Rónán Ó Domhnaill has said that many people who contacted his office last year expressed serious disappointment that state services through Irish were often marginalised during the pandemic. One third of Covid-19 complaints concerned interactive services, such as booking a PCR Test or a vaccine appointment online, not being available in the first official language of the State.

The Commisinéir said: “A total of 123 complaints were received this year related to the health crisis. Many of those complaints could not be investigated due to a lack of provision in legislation requiring satisfactory service through Irish. The matter highlights again the importance on giving effect to the provisions in new Official Languages Act which came into law late last year.

“My Office will be undertaking a substantial information and public awareness campaign later this year to emphasise the importance of the new legislative provisions to both the public and public bodies. If the various provisions of the new Act are properly implemented, the public shall benefit from the availablity of a wider range of services through Irish than heretofore.”

Some of the main provisions in the new Act include:

• An objective that by 2030 20% of new recruits to the public service and Civil Service be proficient in Irish
• A provision requiring public bodies to ensure that at least 20% of their annual advertising is in Irish
• A provision to ensure communications with a public body on social media are answered in the same language.

Other Reports

• Complaints up 20% in 2021, more than a fifth due to access to Covid-19 services (RTÉ)
• Jump in complaints to Irish language commissioner (Irish Times)

The monitoring function of An Coimisinéir Teanga continued last year and is highlighted in the annual report. The monitoring included following-up on recommendations in previous investigations relating to public bodies such as the Department of Education, the Educational Research Centre and RTÉ. 

The Coimisinéir Teanga looks forward in due course to utilising a new function in the revised Official Languages Act which will enable him to monitor any enactments relating to the use of the Irish language, not just the Official Languages Act as is at present. 

Five formal investigations were concluded by the Office of An Coimisinéir Teanga in 2021. One investigation found that Meath County Council breached the Meath County Development Plan by not ensuring the linguistic heritage of the Gaeltacht there was protected when determining planning applications in Ráth Chairn.

Two other investigations related to Dún-Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council and their failure to appoint an Irish-language officer and their failure to ensure that a newsletter distributed throughout the area was available in Irish also.

A total of 727 complaints were made to the Office last year – a 20% increase on 2020. 27% of complaints came from Dublin, with a further 27% from Gaeltacht regions – a 4% increase on 2020.

@CeartaTeanga

Trydar, Tweets or Giolcacha!

There is an interesting article in todays Guardian (Am I the only person who still thinks of it as the Manchester Guardian - like the Examiner I still think of it's original local affiliation?).

It is talking about an English speaking journalist who spent many years abroad serving the English press returning home and finding that his country has "reverted" to a truly respectful attitude to its own ancient heritage. There are some similarities perhaps to Ireland too.

I mostly follow the Irish language media, Raidío na Gaeltachta, TG4, Tuairisc, Meoin Eile and Nós and all too few print publications - no daily or weekly is published.

I do not follow the English Language media published in Ireland (The Irish media?) - though it is almost impossible to ignore it's smothering presence. Anyway back to the hillsides of Wales. The language there is respected. The Welsh Government tries to truly represent all the people. They even have two twitter accounts, @LlywodraethCym and @WelshGovernment.

Respect or?

What has Ireland got? 

@merrionstreet is an English Language presence with the odd tweet in Irish - mostly about Language issues though more recently some other topics have sneaked through. Even the President is @PresidentIRL and of late seems to have abandoned routine tweets in the National Language. The Taoiseach never tweets in Irish.

Even the Department with responsibility for the Gaeltacht - @DeptCulturelRL - is in English. Only one unlikely Government Department has the Irish name for its twitter handle - can you guess which?

Indeed the European Parliament with it's Irish twitter account seems to tweet more in this official language than the account of most if not all Government Departments or the Houses of the Oireachtas.

Only two State Bodies regularly publish bilingually on twitter (or at all), both based in the Gaeltacht - Udarás na Gaeltachta and the Coimisinéir Teanga. (Raidío na Gaeltachta and TG4 do mostly publish in Irish of course.) The only State Organisation that has both an Irish & English Language twitter account is The Central Statistic Office @POStaidrimh  and @CSOIreland. Who'll be next?

Even when a Government Department provides an Irish version of a release or policy or a consultation it rarely if ever publicises it. 

The article in the Guardian makes good and encouraging reading for those anxious to ensure the continuation (no not preservation!) of the original language of the Britons. It does however slip into some of the misconceptions people who speak Irish will recognise. It condescendingly describes Hew Edwards, long time anchor of BBC TV News, as an "evangelical Welsh speaker." We are used to this condescension in any obituaries or descriptions have we in Ireland seen, "Irish language enthusiast," "fluent Irish Speaker" "Inverterate Irish speaker" etc etc. I have heard Hew Edwards speak in Welsh on television once. It is his language. He is hardly an evangelist. Was Angela Merkel a language evangelist because she only spoke publicly in German?

A lot of people speak in Irish, my neighbours do, because it is the language of the place. It is their language. Few if any can be described as "evangelists" or even "enthusiasts." They speak Irish because it is their means of communication. Yet the state makes it virtually impossible for them to communicate indeed actually discourages it use. 

Recently I sense that Irish does seem to be more alive on line - like Welsh because of Raidío na Gaeltachta and TG4 but also I believe because of the influence of the Irish Speaking schools. There are other outlets too in radio, print and social media (and not all with State support).

It looks like there will be a long wait however for our Government to emulate the Welsh example. Maybe it's time for another commission or study group.

More than seven minutes and one hundred years!

During this time of centennial commemorations it is perhaps interesting to see just how advanced our country has advanced as a nation.

Shortly before his death and after he signed the treaty and taken Dublin Castle Collins oar as he signed himself, Mícheál Ó Coilean said, "We have now won the first victory... the biggest task will be the restoration of the language ... Irish will scarcely be our language in this generation, not even perhaps in the next. But until we have it again on our tongues and in our minds we are not free ..." (The Path to Freedom - published some months after his death in 1922).

There are those who feel that the low-key transfer of power in Dublin Castle marked the end of the struggle. Of course it was, as the "Big Fella" said "the first victory." There was more to be achieved.

Of course there are some good signs to be seen. The Oireachtas Committee on Irish & The Irish Speaking Communities, first established in 2016 under the intrepid Galway TD, Catherine Connolly (@catherinegalway) and continued in the current Oireachtas under Aenghus Ó Snodaigh (@aosnodaigh) has been doing real thoughtful work. Although initially contributions featured the usual encomiums to the language and hope the contributors loved it and tributes to its beauty it has now settled down to really important work and in no small measure has contributed to the debates in both ouses of the Oireachtas. 

The final measures in the recognition of our language as an official language of Europe should also help increase respect and its use in officialdom. Seán Kelly's works in trying to encourage its use in the Parliament is also meeting some success.

The treaty of accession to the European Community (now European Union) in 1973 was signed by the then Taoiseach in Irish.

Not least of these was the reconciliation with those who still felt a loyalty to the Westminster Parliament and and whose leader, Dublin man Edward Carson, expressed the year before as the New Northern Ireland was set up in 1921, "What a fool I was. I was only a puppet, and so was Ulster, and so was Ireland, in the political game that was to get the Conservative party into power.” (plus ça change!)  Many believe that the treaty of December 1921 set up Northern Ireland. This is not so. It was established by a Westminster Act of Parliament in May 1920 and the first session of the Northern Ireland Parliament was opened by King George V in June 1921 thus it was a entity at the time that the treaty negotiations commenced during Autumn 1921.

The other victory Collins looked forward to was the reversal of the policy of those who "destroyed our language, all but destroyed it, and in giving us their own they cursed us so that we have become its slaves."

Today, one hundred years on how has this task progressed. If we look at communications from the Irish Parliament in Leinster House - Houses og the Oireachtas - which tweets message for the most part in English as @OireachtasNews. (The European Parliament in contrast has an Irish label and tweets almost daily in Irish as @Europarl_GA with  the "Nuacht is déanaí de chuid na Parlaiminte.").

Uachtarán na hÉireann, Michael D Higgins, inexplicably tweets under the title @PresidentIRL has usually tweeted each message in Irish and in English (though this practise seems to have fallen into abeyance in the last few months).

The current Taoiseach (@MichealMartinTD) rarely tweets in Irish (the last time was 9th December), indeed he even expressed his sorrow at the death of Máire Mhac an tSaoi, the great poet in our language, not in the language of her poetry but in the language of the Bard of Avon.

The Government Departments rarely tweet anything in Irish - even the so-called Department of Culture (@DeptCulturelRL).

In a country that officially espouses bilingualism as a state policy no Government Department has a truly bi-lingual website. The only State organisations that have truly bilingual websites are Udarás na Gaeltachta and that of the Comisinéir Teanga.  Foras na Gaeilge,  which is a cross-border body, also mantains a bilingual website.

Not one elected political has a website that can be remotely be called bi-lingual. Thus no political party can truly be said to represent the Irish speaking community or the Gaeltacht Areas. (The same may be said for the websites of any of the Church groups including those which contain the largest Gaeltacht areas within their dioceses.

There is little sign of the slavery referred by Michael Collins being cast aside even as we commemorate him and his patriotism. The picture (from Journal.ie) at the top shows members of the army with covered mouths - unknowingly symbols of this slavery?

For my own part I will feel the the so-called language policy success is when I can renew my driving license or public service card without difficulty or question in what our constitution calls the National Language.