Irish language ‘on the brink of extinction’

THE Irish language is on the brink of extinction unless radical measures are taken to arrest its decline, a study published today reveals.

Less than a quarter of those in the Gaeltacht are now speaking Irish fluently, according to the study. It points out that fluent speakers have fallen from 250,000 over 80 years ago to under 30,000 today.

The data suggests that only 25% of the country’s Gaeltacht communities can claim Irish is the main language of most families.

The findings are highlighted in an analysis of Government statistics on Irish language by Galway/Mayo Institute of Technology lecturer Donncha O hEallaithe for the weekly Irish language newspaper Foinse.

Only 25% of households in Gaeltacht areas were judged in the school year 2001/02 by Department of the Gaeltacht officials to have a fluency in Irish. The analysis also shows that the number of Irish-speaking families with schoolchildren in the four Gaeltacht counties of Mayo, Cork, Waterford and Meath has fallen to 153 households in total.

In these counties Irish is on the brink of extinction, the report says.

The same is true for large areas of the other Gaeltacht counties of Galway, Donegal and Kerry.

Each year officials from the Department of the Gaeltacht interview children in Gaeltacht schools whose families apply for a 260 grant, available under Scaim Labhairt na Gaeilge (SLG). The full grant is available on an annual basis to families with school-going children, who use Irish as their first language at home. A grant of 130 is given to parents whose children would not have the required level of fluency.

Data for the school year of 2001/02 shows that, of 8,613 families in the Gaeltacht, only 2,143 of them were using Irish as a first language under the scheme.

Mr O hEallaithe said it was imperative that the Government reviewed the boundaries of the Gaeltacht as soon as possible so that it was only areas which were genuinely Irish-speaking that were officially recognised. He said it was an indictment of successive Irish governments that, at the foundation of the state 80 years ago, there were 250,000 fluent Irish speakers living in Irish-speaking or semi-Irish-speaking areas. That number was now between 20,000 and 30,000.

He said the language policy in the Gaeltacht had been a complete disaster. Unless radical protective measures were taken, the few remaining Irish speaking communities were in danger of facing extinction within the next 10 to 20 years.