NUIG ‘charm offensive’ failed to quell Irish language controversy

Bradley Bytes – a sort of political column with Dara Bradley

President of NUI Galway Professor Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh was not happy with a story carried in the Galway City Tribune last Friday week confirming the university had removed the requirement for admin staff to have a competency in the Irish language.

We know he was not happy because he went on RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta and said so. He said it was only ‘half of the story’, and the full story was that NUIG would be publishing a new Irish strategy next month.

As Professor Ó hÓgartaigh is a fan of full disclosure, here’s a little insight into how that story came to light, and why it took so long.

The decision to get rid of the Irish language requirement for Grade 1-3 administrative workers was made at a meeting of the Governing Body in April 2020.

Minutes of the meetings are publicly available.  To get them, you must submit a Freedom of Information request, which is what this newspaper did last August.

A decision was due back on September 4. That deadline was extended to September 10, due to annual leave within a particular department in NUIG.

On September 9, NUIG released the minutes of its March and April Governing Body meetings.

A number of the 15 pages of the April meeting’s minutes were redacted; huge chunks of information completely blacked out.

Information relevant to Irish language policy was redacted because the decision-maker in NUIG deemed it was “commercially sensitive”, under Section 36 of the FOI Act.

An internal appeal of this decision was applied for on September 10. This meant another person in NUIG had a “fresh independent” review of the initial request.

On November 3, a solicitor in NUIG who handled the appeal basically upheld the original decision to release heavily redacted minutes. Paragraphs in which the Irish language requirement was dealt with remained redacted.

This newspaper then appealed to the Office of Information Commission (OIC). Following intervention by OIC, which is an independent adjudicator, NUIG on April 6 of this year – nearly 10 months to the day after the original request was made – responded with an email from Professor Ó hÓgartaigh’s office with mostly un-redacted minutes attached.

The following week, a request for comment about the new Irish language requirement rule was submitted to NUIG. A statement was issued in response 12 days later.

The statement – presumably signed off by senior management – made no reference to a new Irish strategy launch next month. That new strategy was not mentioned in the Governing Body minutes either.

It was only flagged by Professor Ó hÓgartaigh in interviews last week on TG4 and RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta where he went on a charm offensive, and attempted to downplay the Tribune story.

He argued that removing the Irish requirement was a positive step. It may well be. But why not say so, publicly, a year ago, when the decision was made?

Meanwhile, as the controversy raged and Gaeilgeoirí questioned the logic of NUIG abandoning the Irish requirement, a leak of a ‘positive’ story made its way into Tuairisc.ie.

(Photo: NUIG President Professor Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh was not happy when this paper revealed that the university had removed the requirement for admin staff to have a competency in the Irish language.)
For more Bradley Bytes, see this week’s Galway City Tribune. You can buy a digital edition HERE.