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.