Guth na Gaeltacht "The Gaeltacht voice is silenced!")

Has Foras na Gaeilge forgotten the words of the first president of Ireland?

Late on Friday last (1/2/2013) after Gaelscéal, the premier Irish language weekly, published the item discussed in our article, The Dictatorship of Fear, last week about the intimidation apparantly been experienced in the Irish Language sector, Foras na Gaeilge has abruptly withdrawn the subvention to the paper with apparantly no immediate plans to fill the lacuna left by this. 

R.I.P.

Inniú,

Amárach,

Anois,

Foinse,

Lá,

Lá Nua,

Gaelscéal

Moreover when Raidío na Gaeltachta made an effort to get a statement from the Organisation they were told that they would not have anybody available until the following Monday. The press statement although dated 28 January appeared on the Foras na Gaeilge site later - probably on the Monday. The release may be read here: End of Funding for Gaelscéal (pdf).

This non-professional, indeed, amateurish attitude bodes ill for any plans being made for the language from the State not to mention any residual confidence of the Irish speaking community and the Gaeltacht. 

The most glaring innaccuracies in this release is the figure given for average sales. I appears that the only looked at sales in the shops and did not take into consideration the not inconsiderable figures of sales to Schools, direct subscriptions or downloads of the electronic versions of the publication. These figures are closer to 4000 (3970 according to the publishers) rather more than the less that one and a half thousand copies quoted in the release. Moreover the board which made the decision were told that the publishing company, Torann na dTonn, were keen to terminate the agreement, which is strongly, if not indignantly, denied by the company.

Comparisons are odious we are told but I am going to make one. Our nearest neighbour, Wales, has a population of almost 450,000 fluent i their own language. The have one weekly newspaper which has a circulation of 4000. 

The alarming fact also is that this action leads (yet again) to the cessation of a publication, the dispersal of expertese - not to say perhaps personal hardship of those working in the enterprise - without providing the slightest inkling of what the next stage of their plan is. The final sentence  "...plans are being made to cater for this need in the near future.." hardly fill one with hopeful expectation.

Also the fact that this unilateral decision terminates an agreement mid-term is hardly encouraging for any organisation be they voluntary of commercial to conclude any agreement with Foras na Gaeilge. Are they to be trusted?

The decision has lead to some, well actually to quite a lot of discussion on various electronic media, notably twitter and Radío na Gaeltachta and later on TG4 programmes. One thing it lead to an exploration Foras na Gaeilge's own website - an exercise not for the faint-hearted! Among the jewels unearthed was a paper, a study, Irish Language Media Report (Irish), which although some rumblings as to its existence were heard nobody had apparently seen it. However it had been uploaded, unheralded, as indeed are many things, on the website we think in 2011.  It is hidden among "publications" alongside annual reports and other material. (In passing it is interesting that no annual report has been published by this inter-state body since 2009. A contrast between it and the meticulous and the bang up to date reports of the Comisinéir Teanga and Údarás na Gaeltachta is to say the least chastening. Both have published reports for years up to 2011.)

This report, paid for by the Foras by a Dr. Regina Uí Chollatáin (UCD) states unequivically that a printed newspaper in Irish is necessary until 2016. This sits rather oddly with the affirmation in the Foras release "..the printed format is not the most suitable to provide a news service to the Irish language readership." 

This table is of particular interest - excuse the translations, not always my strongest point!

Print & Internet trends

Year /Medium	2011	2016	2021	2026/7
Printed National Newspaper in Irish	Neccesary	Useful  & bi-lingual	Useful as support for online version	2027 - end of printed newspapers (Shane Hegarty Irish Times)
National Newspaper in Irish on-line	Useful as support of printed version	Neccesary	Neccesary	Neccesary
Printed Magazines	Neccesary	Neccesary	Useful as support for online version	Useful

The well known web publication Slugger O'Toole, the award winning news and opinion portal, which takes a critical look at various strands of political politics in Ireland and Britain, published a heartfelf Farewell to Gaelscéal, penned by Concubhar Ó Liatháin, nó stranger to the Machiavelian manouvers of Foras na Gaeilge as former Editor of the former Lá which is well worth a read.

A petition to the authorities who set up and appoint Foras na Gaeilge, viz the Governments of Ireland and Britain, has been set up. You may wish to support it: Reverse the decision of Foras na Gaeilge to close Gaelscéal. If you do sign you may like to ask your friends/followers to sign it to.

We have mentioned the sluggishness of Foras na Gaeilge in publishing annual reports. Perhaps a further insight into how Foras na Gaeilge operates, if that is not too strong a word to use, is contained in this release from Gaelport in late January 2013: Minutes of Foras na Gaeilge Board Meetings Published.

Is it not time, indeed, beyond time, that the Irish and British people, who have ownership of Foras na Gaeilge, sought an examination, a root and branch examination, of this organisation to see it it is in fact fit for purpose as "..the body responsible for the promotion of the Irish language throughout the whole island of Ireland!" Well was it said by Julian de Spáin, Secretary General of Conradh na Gaeilge, the oldest and perhaps most active of all the voluntary organisations, last Friday at a meeting in Galway, "I am angry that we have come to the point now where we are fighting not against the forces of English.... but againste the forces of Irish..." (My translation).

Perhaps Foras na Gaeilge has forgotten, if indeed it ever knew, the cry of the First President of Ireland, "When we speak of 'The Necessity for De-Anglicising the Irish Nation', we mean it, not as a protest against imitating what is best in the English people, for that would be absurd, but rather to show the folly of neglecting what is Irish, and hastening to adopt, pell-mell, and indiscriminately, everything that is English, simply because it is English." (Douglas Hyde, 25/11/1892).

Perhaps the Government of Ireland and our Minister for the Gaeltacht has forgotten it too.

The dictatorship of fear!

"Guth na Gaeltachta curtha ina thost!" (Guth na Gaeltachta silenced!)

This is yesterday's headline in this week's Gaelscéal, one of the Irish newspapers published each week. It indicates that members of Guth na Gaeltachta, the Donegal Gaeltacht based organisation set up in alarm at the direction of State policy towards our language was taking following the publication of the report of An Bórd Snip Nua, were now fearful of speaking publicly because of the threatening attitude being adopted by the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht.

This stems particularly from the letter sent, in English, to one of the members, employed by the Department, not in the Gaeltacht section but in the Heritage section, as a gardener, advising him that his terms of employment could be compromised if he continued speaking against Government policy on the Gaeltacht, that they could be construed as breaking the terms of his employment. We mentioned this in a blog, Bullying from Govenment, in July 2012.

Naturally Guth na Gaeltachta spoke out against this threat at the time. The Junior Minister, to whom responsibility for the Gaeltacht has been devolved, Dinny McGinley, stated that he had no responsibility over civil service procedures!  It appears that the Civil Service operates without impunity. (In a case brought eventually to the Oireachtas by the Comisinéir Teanga the Civil Service "defended" its position on incorrectly implementing its own policy for recruitment. "This is the way we've always done it, therefore it is the correct way!" Sir Humphery could not have said it better!)  Since that time Guth na Gaeltachta has been remarkably silent and normally vociferous spokespeople, not all of whom are Department employees, are unwilling to make any comments, good bad on indifferent, "on advice."

One wonders where this will stop. I have come across one old-age-pensioner who is now afraid to voice his opinion on the Language he has loved and  for which he has fought all his life, because he now depends on a state pension and is afraid he will loose it. What about employees of the Department of Education or third level institution who owe their funding to the state? On the radio last evening it emerged that language planning experts in Galway University had been moved "sideways" from the Language Planning Department. This is the Department which will be in greater demand by Gaeltacht parishes if the policy forced through the Oireachtas by this government last year is to be implemented!

This attitude falls in with the dictatorial way in which this Fine Gael/Labour Government is ramming through policy, much of it not really thought through, and instilling fear on one sort or another not only into the Gaeltacht people, but also people in other areas , especially rural people. One merely has to mention the fear gripping so many people with the closure today of one hundred rural Garda stations - eight in the Donegal Gaeltacht. Or the threatening behaviour of the Minister of the Environment Phil Hogan on the issues of so-called "Household Tax" and rural effluent treatment. How he has cut-back funding to local authorities because he says that people in their area had not paid this charge, the collection of which was in fact not the responsibility of the local authority!  Look at the enforced mergings of the National Library and National Archives; National Museum and National Gallery; Comisinéir Teanga and Ombudsman; the the ramming through of the Gaeltacht Bill which removes the democratic authenticity of Údarás na Gaeltachta are all indications of a dictatorial bureaucracy. It is interesting in this context to look at what our present President Michael D Higgins has said on "institutional inadequacy,"(The President, the bureaucracy and the language! 5/11/2012)

 Yesterday a person came to my door by mistake looking for an elderly neighbour. He was from an organisation which provides alarms specifically for the elderly living alone and afraid of incursions by person or persons unknown. An indication of the fear gripping rural Ireland?

The exclusive story in Gaelscéal (Irish)

Martin Niemöller, was a Luthern Theologian in Germany during the war. This is somethig he said which has perhaps some little relevence here.

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.

Have they come for Guth na Gaeltachta?