’Gaeltacht grants should end’

GMIT lecturer calls for end of Gaeltacht grants

Anton McNulty

AN IRISH language expert has called on the Department of the Gaeltacht to stop the administration of infrastructure grants exclusively for Gaeltacht regions, as he feels they have not helped promote the Irish language.
The call was made by Donncha Ó hEallaithe, a GMIT lecturer, during a talk he gave on the use of the Irish language in the Mayo Gaeltachtaí. In his presentation, he produced statistics to show how the use of Irish had declined in Mayo. He also said that if the boundaries of the Mayo Gaeltacht were redrawn using the criteria from a report entitled ‘A Comprehensive Linguistic Study of the Use of Irish in the Gaeltacht’, the population in the Mayo Gaeltacht would decrease from 11,000 to just over 2,000 people.
Mr Ó hEallaithe explained that the funding from the Department of the Gaeltacht for roads and bridges should be stopped and funding should be given to promote the language as the spoken language of the community. While he understood why the grants were introduced, he said they have not helped the promotion of Irish and said that statistics show there are more Irish speakers in Killala and Balla, which are not in the Gaeltacht, than in Belmullet.
“The fear people have in Gaeltacht areas where Irish is not spoken any more than other parts of the country is that they will lose grants. The grants for roads, bridges and water schemes should not be administered on the basis of language, they should be available to those communities because they are their rights. Whatever grant is given to the Gaeltacht above and beyond what is given to the rest of the country should be based on cultivating Irish as the spoken language of the community, and maintaining Irish in the parts of Mayo which are still Irish-speaking.
“The grants never worked and Belmullet is no more Irish-speaking now than in 1956 when it shouldn’t have been put into the Gaeltacht, but the politicians insisted it be put in. The Government has been pumping money into it and it still hasn’t improved. I’m not against the development of Belmullet and the employment created but this money should be for the development of the Erris region regardless of whether it is Irish-speaking or non-Irish-speaking,” he said.
When asked how the Irish language could be improved, Mr Ó hEallaithe said a Language Development Officer should be appointed to the areas where Irish is still spoken in Mayo, who would work with the community groups and offer advice and support to the community. He claimed if there was a stabilisation of the Irish language in these areas, it would grow into areas where Irish is weak.