Unfair dismissal of Irish language documents

YOUR editorial concerning expenditure on Irish language versions of public documents (November 5), and the report on which it was based, do not present a fair and accurate picture.

Fair enough, Irish language versions of the development plans for Skibbereen and Macroom cost €89,000 and, yes, there was no demand from the public for hard copies of these documents.

What was not clear from your report was that these documents are available online free of charge. Why would anybody pay €30 per hard copy document when they’re available free?

The reason Cork County Council produced Irish language versions of the plans for Macroom and Skibbereen is their respective links to Gaeltacht areas — Macroom is the main service town for Musgraí while Skibbereen covers Oilean Cléire.

In these areas — and, indeed, throughout Co Cork — live people whose language of daily discourse is Irish. Cork County Council is providing a service for these people. They deserve the service as much as English-speaking residents in Cork.

While your central argument — “Spending hundreds of thousands of euro on something nobody wants is economic lunacy” — would be valid if true, it’s not necessarily the case that this is so. Would you pay €30 for a document which is available free?

I have a certain amount of sympathy for your argument. Thousands of Irish speakers throughout Ireland and the world read Lá Nua, Ireland’s only Irish language daily, every day and the grant aid it gets from Foras na Gaeilge is nowhere near the money expended on documents, which are hardly read in English, being translated into Irish.

There needs to be a degree of rationality and consistency introduced into this debate. The same day you attacked the expenditure on documents in Irish “nobody reads”, your newspaper carried a large — and no doubt expensive — advertisement in Irish from Cork County Council regarding new regulations about marriage venues.

It would be both rational and consistent with your main argument if you were to advocate the placing of the Irish language versions of such advertisements in Irish language newspapers.

That would help reduce dependence on grant-aid while also realising the other objective mentioned in the editorial, “imaginative language initiatives”.

There are many imaginative schemes to promote the Irish language, most of which are under-funded, if at all.

It would go a great deal towards reassuring Irish speakers that the editorial wasn’t just another cheap shot at their expense, in the vein of the recent over-the-top comparison between Pobal Scoil Chorca Dhuibhne and the Finsbury Park Mosque (October 17), if the Irish Examiner were to lead by example.

Concubhar Ó Liatháin

Eagarthóir/Editor

Lá Nua

Cúil Aodha

Co Chorcaí