Is breá liom Gaeilge but we should dump it as a core subject

In his epic March 2011 Vanity Fair piece on the Irish financial crash, Michael Lewis made many fascinating observations about our funny little ways.

The sort of observations that only an outsider can make. But one, in particular, stood out and I have remembered it since: “The first thing you notice when you watch the Irish parliament at work is that the politicians say everything twice, once in English and once in Gaelic. As there is no one in Ireland who does not speak English and a vast majority who do not speak Gaelic, this comes across as a forced gesture that wastes a great deal of time. I ask several Irish politicians if they speak Gaelic, and all offer the same uneasy look and hedgy reply: ‘Enough to get by’.”

Lewis identified an ongoing issue that many people who watch or who are direct actors complain about in Irish politics — the tokenism that prevails when it comes to our so-called national language.

The sheer utter waste of time that is involved in TDs repeating themselves in both languages.

As a result of having so many teachers in the Dáil, the ability to speak Irish has been for so long used as an elitist stick to beat the heretics who are not fluent in our sacred mother tongue.

I cite the time in March 2015 when then Taoiseach Enda Kenny sought to embarrass Independent TD Mick Wallace by refusing to address him in English, even though Wallace made it clear he does not speak Irish.

Kenny, at his most arrogant, barked at Wallace to “put on your translation system. This is our national language and this is Lá na Gaeilge”.

He continued to jabber on in Irish, only to stop to say:

Can you hear me, is it switched on?

Wallace was outraged as Kenny’s slap-down smacked of the worst high-handedness present in all true believers of what is, in truth, a dead or dying language. Wallace was not alone in not being able to speak Irish.

Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald’s limited Irish is well known and she has sought to sidestep the issue to the point where no one pushes her on it.

Her predecessor would mangle the mother tongue but would insist on forcing us all to hear him do it and then, as Lewis pointed out, say again what he had just said in English.

It raises the wider point as to why do it? Why does our political system pay such homage to what is an extremely niche matter?

Before you wish to burn me at the stake, it is worth remembering that according to the Central Statistics Office, Irish is the main home, work or community language for approximately 2% of the population of the Republic of Ireland of 4,761,865. In the 2016 census, of the 1.76m who said they could speak Irish, just 73,803 said they speak it daily outside the education system, a fall of 3,382 on the 2011 figure.

A further 111,473 said they speak it weekly, while 586,535 said they speak it less often. Over one in four (421,274) said they never speak Irish. I am not without emotion for Irish. I learned it for 15 years in school. I have my cúpla focal and a few more besides.

I like many others, used it drunkenly when abroad while trying to show people that we are not English. We have sent our daughter to a brilliant gaelscoil. She loves it and it is a joy to watch her language develop.

But, the truth must be confronted. How Irish is being taught really is a calamitous failure. It simply is not working, but the system is enslaved to the die-hards who refuse to come down from their high perch and accept reality. In turn, their hardline position and lobbying have made progress or reform impossible.

But all the while, the vast majority of the population, who at best have a tolerance for the Irish language, are made to endure the colossal waste of time and inconvenience of it all.

A prime example: the greater Dublin area is where Irish is spoken least, but if you examine the Dublin Bus timetables at bus stops, they are more often than not written in Irish with no English translation beside it.

How on earth are tourists supposed to make head or tail of that? What about the 98% of the bus-travelling population who do not use Irish?

In truth, the language serves little or no practical purpose in the primary running of the State, except on ceremonial occasions. So, the recent debate about the possible return of history as a core subject on the school curriculum poses a question.

The stupid decision to remove history — the exploration of where we have come from and more importantly the study of humanity’s great errors and tragedies — is rightly under revision and barring any disasters, it will be restored to its rightful place. But the same can not be said for geography, which is not currently under the same consideration.

At a recent doorstep, Education Minister Joe McHugh made clear his focus is not on geography and he has many requests to place other emerging subjects as core requirements at least up until Junior Cert.

I have a solution. If room needs to be found, why not remove the highly niche and much ignored Irish language as a core subject? Its retention as one, ahead of far more relevant ones such as digital coding or economics or geography or music, is difficult to defend.

In an increasingly digitised world, surely preparing our children to be digitally literate is more important than beating them over the heads with the modh coinníollach.

Yes, it is our national language. Yes, it is an ancient tradition that is worthy of retaining but driving it down everyone’s throat is not working, has not worked and will never work.

By making it a subject of choice, it will still be there for all the passionate defenders of the faith. It would also strengthen the hand of gaelscoileanna as centres of excellence for the language.

Rather than be slaves to the nirvana-esque ideal which will never be realised, why not be pragmatic and realistic and end the pretence that Irish as a language is a desire for the many. It is not. It should be consigned to the marginalised status that it holds. Remove the emotion out of it, this is not a marginal call. This is 98% to 2%.

By allowing it become a subject of choice, those who wish to keep the flame alive can do so and the rest of the country would be allowed get on with their lives and careers unburdened by the weight of our dying mother tongue.