Only on this poor benighted island could a government minister effectively claim with all due seriousness that rising levels of complaints from citizens about discriminatory practices within government is a good thing because it proves that citizens are indeed being discriminated against. From the Irish Times:
“[Fianna Fáil TD] Mr Kitt said the number of complaints to the Irish language commissioner was increasing, from 734 in 2011 to 757 in 2012. The complaints were from across the State and 26 per cent were from within the Gaeltacht.
The Minister told him it was “a good thing that complaints are coming in from the public because it shows the demand for Irish speakers”. “
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is how we do government in Ireland. Oh well, at least they get some things right. Even if it does take them some twenty odd years to do it.
AN SIONNACH FIONN 
Do they ever listen to themselves?
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i remember going to a f.á.s. placement interview there in the 90s and the interviewer insisting on wanting to know my full name in english….
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If it’s not too OT you might like to know that the Welsh Language Commissioner has just won a case against National Savings and Investments, a semi-state body, who thought they could just cancel their language scheme as a cost saving measure. The resulting judicial review raised some fairly technical legal questions over the interpretation of statutes etc. but in the end the judges told NS&I to restore their Welsh Language services to the public forthwith.
Welsh Language Commissioner v National Savings & Investments
High Court (QB) 6th March 2014
(s) 70 reads in part :
“At a time when the Commissioner was attempting to perform her statutory functions, and trying to engage with NS&I, the responses she received from senior executives within NS&I were brusque, inappropriate, discourteous and disrespectful of the Commissioner’s office and her functions. It is in our view disappointing – others might use stronger terms – that, in exercising its statutory functions, one statutory body would treat another statutory body, attempting to exercise its own statutory functions, thus.”
“Ar adeg pryd yr oedd y Comisiynydd yn ceisio cyflawni ei swyddogaethau statudol, ac yn ceisio gweithio gyda CBC, roedd yr ymatebion a gafodd oddi wrth uwch swyddogion o fewn CBC yn swta, yn amhriodol, yn anghwrtais ac yn amharchus tuag at swydd y Comisiynydd a’i swyddogaethau. Y mae, yn ein barn ni, yn siomedig – gallai eraill ddefnyddio termau cryfach – y byddai un corff statudol, wrth arfer ei swyddogaethau statudol, yn trin corff statudol arall, oedd yn ceisio arfer ei swyddogaethau statudol yntau, yn y fath fodd.”
Sounds familiar? I just wonder what further tricks Sir Humphrey Pumphrey has planned to frustrate Sgeri Meri?
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We of course do things rather differently. Depressingly predictable.
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Maybe that’s because you can actually hear welsh language on the streets.
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Maybe that’s because Welsh-speakers don’t get dirty looks, the cold shoulder treatment or actual verbal abuse? Or at least rarely so. I have told this many times but the fact that several friends of mine in a well-known Dublin restaurant were politely asked not to speak in Irish by first a waitress and then the manager because they were “disturbing” other customers and when they refused to switch to English when talking amongst themselves they were threatened with being asked to leave… That is the reality in our “multicultural” capital city.
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name and shame, sionnach – no point anymore in the language of disguised case studies! name the restaurant and text dil-w on Newstalk on Saturday after 7pm and she might read it out on air after the first ad-break, provided she’s not afraid of getting sued after you cleverly phrase the text (by anon o’shea) – what have you to lose?
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