Depoliticising our language - Multicultural society may save Irish

When he spoke in Auckland on Friday, during the fourth day of his State visit to New Zealand, President Michael D Higgins reflected on how our relationship with the Irish language has been defined by what he described as the “authoritative” nature of Irish language teaching in schools.

Hundreds of thousands of Irish people will agree with him, regretting that an early opportunity to embrace something beautiful and rewarding, to appreciate something if not unique then distinctive, had been lost because dreary, idealogical, compulsion can never trump heart-felt enthusiasm.

That compulsion was imposed by a particular strand of nationalism. The diktat was counterproductive.