Renaming Dingle - An Daingean will confuse visitors

The attitude of Minister for the Gaeltacht, Eamon Ó Cuiv, to the use of the English version of Dingle on signposts outside the Gaeltacht area, is not just difficult to understand but could be considered to be overbearing and intimidatory.

The use of Dingle, rather than An Daingean as the minister insists, is not simply a matter of semantics. The local economy could suffer because tourists, who are the lifeblood of the area, cannot find it because of the minister’s intransigence.

As has been pointed out locally, Dingle is an internationally recognised tourist brand name, whereas An Daingean is an obscure name on a signpost which only serves to confuse visitors who want to go to Dingle. It defies logic why both versions cannot be used.

His analogy with changing Kingstown to Dún Laoighaire and Queenstown to Cobh is antiquated, because it was the political spirit around the time of the country’s independence which removed these vestiges of royalty from the landscape.

The minister’s assertion that the biggest tourist industry there was language-related as 24,000 students went to the Kerry Gaeltacht every year to learn Irish, is utterly irrelevant and misses the point of the argument.

He may as well demand every city and town with a gaelscoil be forced to change its name to an Irish version. But what is overbearing and extreme about his attitude is the minister’s suggested possible solution that, if it is the wish of the community, they initiate a legal action to take Dingle out of the Gaeltacht.

He is well aware of the financial benefits accruing through a variety of grants for being a designated Gaeltacht area, so his disingenuous solution could amount to a threat which was not even veiled.

In any case, the public representatives of the largest Irish-speaking town in the Gaeltacht area want to retain the anglicised version of the town name outside the Gaeltacht for a logical and practical reason. They are not threatening to declare an independent republic.