Political World
State pays little more than lip service to preservation of the Irish language
World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com
A school debate long ago trí Ghaeilge between Coláiste Iognáid (the Jes) and Coláiste Cholmcille from Indreabhán – like many debates in Irish – was on the state of the language itself. On this particular day, the theme went something like this: “An bhfuil teilifís ag marú na teanga?”
We had drawn the short straw. As well as having much poorer Irish than the Gaeilge bhinn bhlasta with the Connemara blas of our rivals, we were also arguing on the wrong side of the argument.
We were trying to prove that TV had had little impact on the language – and this was the early 1980s, a good decade before TG4. It was a no-brainer and we were no hopers.
The killer line was delivered by their captain, one of the Ó hÉanaigh brothers. Talking about one of their young relations at home, he said the first three words out of his mouth had been: “Mamaí, dadaí agus the Incredible Hulk”. In our hearts we knew we had lost once those words had been uttered.
The arrival of TG4 (Teilifís na Gaeilge as it was then) in 1996 was a crucial moment in the struggle for survival of the language. Sadly it is one of the few bright moments in a slow, sad and seemingly irreversible decline.
Michael D Higgins was Minster for Arts and the Gaeltacht back then. Only one Aire Gaeltachta, Éamon Ó Cuív, could be compared in the same breath. As for the arts, the spark brought by Higgins to the role has long been quenched.
Irish is still a living language but it faces challenges on multiple of fronts that could not have been imagined, even by us enthusiasts, three decades ago. Then you could go to the heart of the Gaeltacht in Connemara and meet a lot of people – admittedly older – who spoke no English.
In the fíor-Ghaeltacht – places like Carna and Leitir Mór and the islands – the Irish they spoke was unpolluted by English syntax and words. When you hear the likes of Seosamh Ó Cuaig or Máirtín Jamsie Ó Fatharta speak, you hear rich tapestries of language which has been weaved for generations.
But all that has changed. Of course, there are trade-offs. Isolation and relative poverty have given way to more prosperity and connectedness – from childhood children are exposed to the same cultural experiences as all others in the western world. And that means a bombardment of English.
There is no doubt that it has not only affected the way children growing up in the Gaeltachtaí speak Irish – there is an increasing tendency to form sentences using the English ‘frame’ – but there has also been a marked diminution in the number of children who are willing to speak Irish together.
I was at a seminar last year where a parent living in Carna talked about the losing battle to bring their children up in Irish there – once outside the house and the school, English was predominant.
Bilingualism is a reality in all Gaeltachts now. Every language is a living thing and all living languages are mongrels – Irish has borrowed liberally from English, Norman, Scandanavian and Latin over the centuries.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
World of Politics with Harry McGee
Academically, politics is described as a science. But in the real world, it’s more of an art – and one of the big decisions a Government has to make is to decide when to call an election.
Will they see out the full term, or will they go early – either to mitigate the damage they will ship, or to secure a victory before things go awry, or the economy takes a dip, or some kind of controversy erupts?
Timing is everything.
And there’s a bit of art to that – not to mention a lot of luck. If you call it early and win big, you’re a genius. If you call it early and lose, you are the political version of the village fool.
Charlie Haughey was a poor judge of the public mood. Twice he called snap elections and on both occasions they backfired. Haughey succeeded Jack Lynch as Taoiseach in late 1979 and did not – technically – have his own mandate. He tried to remedy that by calling an election in 1981. But it recoiled. Ray MacSharry warned him not to hold it during the H Block hunger strikes when republican prisoners were dying each day. He did not listen to the advice and found himself out of office.
After his return to power in 1987, Haughey tired of presiding over a minority government that kept on losing votes in the Oireachtas (the opposition won nine private members motions).
So he called a snap general election and it backfired. Fianna Fáil lost seats and had to broker a coalition deal with the Progressive Democrats and his long-standing political adversary Dessie O’Malley.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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World of Politics with Harry McGee
I was cycling down Mount Street in Dublin on Tuesday. It’s a wide esplanade that links the Grand Canal with Merrion Square. The street is a mixture of fine Georgian buildings and modern office blocks.
About half-way down is the office of the International Protection Office, which deals with asylum seekers who have arrived in the country.
Needless to say, the office has been overwhelmed in the past year. Besides an estimated 80,000 refugees who have arrived from Ukraine, there have been about 20,000 people from other parts of the world who have arrived into Dublin (mostly) claiming asylum.
The numbers peaked around Christmas, but they have been falling a little. In January, more than 1,300 people arrived seeking asylum but the numbers fell back to 831 and 858, in February and March respectively.
They are still huge numbers in a historical context.
So back to my cycle on Tuesday. I knew that some asylum seekers were camping outside the International Protection Office, but I was taken aback by how many. There were six tents lined up on the pavement directly outside. Then on the ramp that led down to the basement carpark on the side of the building, there were about another 20 tents.
It looked like what it was, a refugee camp in the middle of Dublin’s business district. If you pan out from Mount Street, you will find tents here and there in nearby streets and alleys. There were a good few tents in an alleyway off Sandwith Street about 500 metres away.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
World of Politics with Harry McGee
God that was a dramatic and historic weekend in England, wasn’t it? So much excitement, so much change, so much hype, so much out with the old and in with the new, and what looks like the coronation of a new leader. Yes, the local elections in Britain were something else weren’t they!
Apologies for not going on about King Charles III but the contract I signed when I became a lifelong republican forbids me to discuss the topic!
I know the British local elections sound a bit boring by comparison, but the results were stunning.
The Conservatives lost nearly 1,000 seats, the British Labour Party gained almost 500 and both the Lib Dems (with 350 gains) and the Greens (gaining over 200) also had amazing days at the polls.
It was Labour’s best day since 2002 but its victory was only partial. The Greens and the Lib Dems actually made gains at the expense of Labour in more affluent areas, and in parts of Britain where there were high numbers of graduates.
It was in the Red Wall constituencies in the North of England where the Labour recovery was strongest. These are working class constituencies with pockets of deprivation where people voted for the Labour Party forever. But all of those constituencies voted for Brexit and then voted for the Tories in the next general election. Labour is now winning back some of those votes.
Local elections are classified as second-tier elections which essentially means – from a national perspective – they are not life-or-death affairs, and not everything turns on them. Of course, it’s really important to have good local representation. But they are not an amazing weather vane for who rules the country.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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