Critics misrepresent FG’s Irish language policy

I HAVE followed closely the debate in the Irish Examiner over Fine Gael’s proposals on the Irish language.

Most of it has centred on the proposal to make Irish an optional subject for Leaving Cert students, without looking at the other aspects of Fine Gael policy.

Enda Kenny has outlined on more than one occasion a series of changes to the way the Irish language is promoted and taught that he would like to see implemented if Fine Gael are elected to government.

Last March, he hosted a conference in Dublin entitled Irish in the 21st Century: Reform, Renew, Revive.

Here he stated that he wanted to “equip our people, and particularly our young people, with a real, a useful, and a communicative knowledge of the Irish language”.

Mr Kenny has stated that the core of the Fine Gael policy is to bring the Irish language into the 21st century and support it for future generations. He has highlighted several initiatives, including utilising the best available technology and teaching methods for primary and secondary level, promoting the teaching of Irish as a living language by including topics that are modern, relevant and useful, and development of a new national strategy that co-ordinates all initiatives and bodies working to promote the language.

It is a pity that those who seek to promote the language have only singled out Mr Kenny’s proposal that Irish should be optional after the Junior Certificate.

What is a greater pity is that these same people intentionally misrepresent his efforts. Sinn Féin’s Cllr John Brady (Irish Examiner letters, June 27) claimed that Enda Kenny proposed to ‘drop Irish from the school curriculum’, which is incorrect.

On the same day, Eoin Ó Riain referred to a Glór na nGael petition with over 4,500 signatures.

This petition claims ‘it is Fine Gael’s policy to end the Irish language as a compulsory subject for students in schools in the Irish educational system’, which is also incorrect. The last census figures available show that only 12.6% of the population claim to speak Irish on at least a weekly basis.

Considering that over half of these were aged 5-19, and thus obliged to study Irish on a daily basis in school, it is a bit of an exaggeration for Glór na nGael to claim in the same petition that Irish is thriving as a living language.

It is also interesting to note that the two Fine Gael representatives actively promoting this policy, Enda Kenny and Fergus O’Dowd, are both fluent Irish speakers with a genuine love of the language.

Perhaps if others who claim to love the language discussed their views in a more open manner, without recourse to scare tactics and ‘populism’, then the Irish language might be the winner. Only a thought.

Patrick O’Driscoll

20 Ashfield Place

Rathcormac

Co Cork.