April 21, 2005
As a mheabhair
Sign of the disgruntled on the Headford Rd., outside Galway city.
During the mourn-fest of RTE's wall-to-wall coverage of the Pope's funeral, it seemed like every RTE programme was trying to find Irish people in Poland or Italy to get a reaction (quelle surprise - the masses were sad). The Pat Kenny Show discovered an Irishman at the university in Lublin, where the late John Paul II had once been professor of Ethics (imagine the reputation that his successors had to live up to). How had he ended up there? It turned out that the university was looking for a lecturer of English and Irish, and it intrigued this chap so much that he took the job. I was interested, too, but , alas, Pat couldn't care less. Instead, he wanted to know how the people of Lublin were taking the Pope's death. And, shock horror, it turned out that they were 'sad'. [When I lived in Stockholm, one of the nearby universities offered courses in both Irish and Welsh, which seemed as good a way of dodging the riches of the late Nineties boom as any].
I was down in Conradh na Gaeilge's office on Dominick St. in Galway a couple of weeks ago signing up for a refresher course I must say, I was touched at the number of non-nationals signing up for Irish classes. The impact was lessened somewhat when I discovered that Galway VEC are paying for these courses as a part of a support programme for asylum seekers.
Mind you, we need all the Irish speakers that we can find. The fall-out from the Udaras elections continues. Val Hanley (former mayor of Galway) got elected mainly because "the Gaeltacht" now encompasses parts of the city. Hanley admitted that his Irish was only about "60% of what a Connemara candidate would have". And that's Val being a bit generous.
You'd think that the obvious remedy would be to redraw the boundary of the Gaeltacht areas. Ah. The problem with that idea is that it will inevitably cause controversy as people who were previously entitled to the Gaeltacht grant find themselves removed from the catchment area. And it's just too close to an election for that sort of thing...
Posted by Monasette at April 21, 2005 11:46 PMWhy do we need all the Irish Speakers ??
What purpose does the language serve??