The language of new opportunity

THREE cheers for the Government on their formal request that Irish be made an official EU language. At present the EU has 20 official languages, Irish not included.

On May 1 this year EU law was amended to insert Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Slovene and Maltese (which, like Irish, has approximately 380,000 daily speakers) as official EU languages. EU laws and official documents of general application are translated into the official EU languages. Laws enacted by the Oireachtas must be issued in Irish and English.

Although EU law is directly enforceable in Ireland, the EU up to now was not obliged to issue European laws (except treaties) in Irish.