Calls to assist children of ‘new Irish’ to learn their heritage

More supports to help children of the “new Irish” to learn their heritage languages could help bridge a major skills gap, a senior education figure has claimed.

Census 2011 figures show that more than 500,000 people live in a home where English is not the first language. However, Irish Vocational Education Association (IVEA) education officer Pat O’Mahony said the State had yet to properly recognise the advantage of helping young people from such homes to acquire full written fluency in their heritage languages.

“Those young people coming from non-English speaking homes can become one of our greatest assets. If we assist them to acquire native speaker standard competence in their heritage languages, we will be going a significant way to meeting our need for workers fluent in both English and a foreign language.