The Official Languages Act of 2003 is one of the few pieces of legislation in Irish law that guarantees the (deliberately limited) rights of Irish-speaking citizens when dealing with the government of Ireland. It ensures that a minimum standard of Irish language and bilingual services are provided by most (though not all) public bodies. In fact, as we have seen, the emphasis is on the “minimum” and report after report has shown that the majority of government departments ignore or otherwise circumvent the regulations laid out under the act. Technically this is illegal. In reality much of the political establishment in Ireland is willingly complicit in fostering this culture of institutional discrimination by the State towards its Irish-speaking population.
Back in 2012 I predicted that it was only a matter of time before the Fine Gael – Labour coalition government “gutted” the Official Languages Act of any meaning as part of their wider policy of targeting Hibernophone citizens and communities. The legislation is positively loathed by a number of anglophone Fine Gael and Labour TDanna, while many more are simply apathetic on the matter. So we now have the revelation of exactly that proposal in a government document leaked to the Irish Times newspaper:
“The Government is planning to row back on provisions in legislation guaranteeing Irish speakers equal access to State services, according to a document seen by The Irish Times.
A revised draft Official Languages (Amendment) Bill 2014 includes the removal of a provision requiring the publication in each of the official languages of documents setting out public policy proposals.
Citing the cost associated with the translation of documents as the reason for the amendment, an accompanying note says the move “will address one of the main concerns that have arisen in regards to the implementation costs associated with the Act”.
The draft also includes a proposal to extend the term of language schemes from 3 years to 7 years. Language schemes are currently reviewed after three years and an accompanying explanatory note says the proposed measure will “considerably lessen the administrative burden in drafting, agreeing and confirming language schemes.”
Under another heading, titled Irish names and postal addresses, the draft provides for the use by persons of the Irish language or English language “version” of their names and addresses when communicating with public bodies.
However, an accompanying note says this provision has potential practical implications as IT and other business systems used in the public sector may require a “lead-in” time prior to implementation.
Other measures listed in the draft legislation include an amendment allowing the Minister for the Gaeltacht to withdraw a notice to a public body requiring it to prepare a language scheme as well as the formal adoption of the 2011 decision to merge the Irish language Commissioner’s office with the office of the Ombudsman as part of the public sector reform programme.
Fianna Fáil’s Éamon Ó Cuív said the draft was “frightening” and questioned the basis for most of the proposed amendments.
Singling out the amendment providing for the use of Irish and English versions of names and addresses, Mr Ó Cuív said:
“I have to say that I always believed that no-one had the right to translate my name. I always thought that your name belonged to you yourself and that there was no right (for instance) to translate a Russian name into English.”
Conradh na Gaeilge president Cóilín Ó Cearbhaill said the draft bill heads “completely disregard the needs of the Gaeltacht and Irish-speaking community.”
Mr Ó Cearbhaill said the proposed amendments include “nothing but cutbacks and a reneging on promises of increased provision of public services in Irish.”
And just in case anyone has failed to get the message that there exists in Ireland a two-tiered system of citizenship, English-speakers and Irish-speakers, more news from the dark and murky world of “Irish” government, again via the Irish Times:
“It will take 100 years for 1 per cent of the public service to be able to provide services in Irish at the current rate of implementation of the Government’s Irish language strategy, it has been claimed.
Sinn Féin’s Gaeltacht Affairs spokesman Peadar Tóibín said that based on 300 public sector workers currently attending Irish language classes it would be a century before just 1 per cent of the public service had sufficient fluency in Irish to provide service in the language to the public.”
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AN SIONNACH FIONN 
outstanding synopsis, sionnach, and we both know what’ll happen when/if (as previous writer to your blog decried this week) the Irish language requirement for teachers *of Irish and all other subjects* in state primary schools is abolished…. @
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and listening to cormac@cúig in the last couple of weeks, it’s obvious from recent stories there (and articles in the press) how poor the level of Irish language teaching is at primary level – fluent mothers spoke of their shock (and perhaps embarrassment)
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Athbhlagáladh é seo ar seachranaidhe1..
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I’m at a loss to understand this, but then I’m a foreigner so probably can’t be expected to understand the Irish. Where do Irish civil servants get their basic education? Is it not reasonable to suppose that most are educated in Ireland, and therefore have had many years of Irish lessons? If so why is there the need for, and expense of, employing specialist translation staff. To be a civil servant you must I assume be well educated. To be well educated in Ireland you must have a good grasp of Irish, just as once upon a time to be well educated you needed to have mastered Latin. So it should follow that all official documents etc. are drafted bilingually, that is in Irish, the state language, with an English gloss added on the fly. This btw concentrates the writer’s mind on the meanings behind the words should help to avoid the unfortunate habit of reeling off strings of near meaningless jargon. It is incomprehensible to an outsider how after 90+ years of independence with Irish as the official state language, you have *any* state employees senior enough to draft documents more important than a shopping list who cannot at least read and write acceptable Irish. Internationally you must be a laughingstock, were the situation not so tragic.
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on the money Marconatrix: particularly in the last 20 years, the poor standard of irish among higher degree graduates in the public service is to do with post-primary/university grade inflation (not as smart as people think), cultural antipathy towards the language generally (“irish speakers are all provos”) and senior public sector level hostility towards irish speakers going back decades to the foundation of the state (with pre-1922 civil servants), manifesting today with irish society’s inferiority complex in the current generation (“f*ck it!”) – particularly those above the age of 35 (“irish is a dead language”)
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appraisal (now 20 years old) of the ‘dead language’ (well before setting up of today’s TG4 television station) can be viewed below… needless to say same arguments are repeated elsewhere ad nauseam (although irish as well as maths are particularly being taught abysmally is state schools)
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/nearly-70-schools-put-under-supervision-over-poor-standards-248486.html
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ireland’s grade inflation: an unstated shame – the abject capitulation of principles within the state’s education sector —
http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/dumbing-down-will-screw-up-economy-morgan-kelly-warns-1.1718394
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Irish language laws are like the Prohibition.
Nice sounding phrases on paper and all, but no one really wants them enforced.
Looks like that the absolute majority have decided that they are English speaking nation and want to simply ignore the Irish speakers.
If 90+% of people are like that – what do you expect from the government?
They are not from another planet or puppets of some foreign government – they are ordinary Irish people.
Private sector ignores the language COMPLETELY.
You either speak English or get fired – that’s the attitude of the private sector.
Why aren’t you complaining about that?
Private sector is not above the law.
And if the use of Irish language is a right, then private companies should respect it too.
(At least that is the case in all other European countries)
But that obviously is not happening.
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Governments should lead from the front. There was absolutely no popular demand in Ireland for the metric system, kilometres instead of miles or a ban on smoking in public places yet…
If the political will was there it would happen. As in the Baltic republics. Imagine Latvia or Estonia led by pro-Russian establishments? Imagine Latvia under a Russian-speaking political and media elite? Where would Latvian be then? That is what we face here.
That is why we must fight it. As have others.
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State employees are NOT required to speak Irish.
Therefore it comes as no surprise that most of them can’t speak it at all.
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My point was that they would have gone to school (most of them) in Ireland, where Irish is a compulsory subject, studied apparently for many years. I went to school in the UK and like nearly everyone at the time was taught French. I had no particular interest in French, had no connection with France nor any desire ever to go there, and didn’t even get as far as taking the basic (O Level) exam, but all the same I still ended up knowing enough French so that when I needed to read French language material in my own speciality, I had enough basic knowledge to do so, and given a motive soon got up to speed. Somehow, at school or otherwise, you (Jānis) managed to learn English, as do most Dutch, Danes, Swedes, Finns … If I could learn French with little motivation after four and a half years of school lessons, why can’t the Irish learn Irish after two or three times that amount of study, and importantly beginning at a younger age? The English-speaking Welsh learn Welsh at school, the Finns learn Swedish at school, everyone abroad it seems learns English at school, what’s wrong with the Irish?
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An English-speaking establishment in politics and the media that does not wish to have an Irish-speaking population and actively works to discourage it short of outright prohibition?
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Or we could I supposes come at this from the other end. If Irish plays no real part in public life in Ireland, why devote so much time and effort to teaching it at school? Inscrutable bloody Irish 😉
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letter to this morning’s Sunday Independent speaks for itself – same questions answered, indeed, modern Irish society was always a deeply conformist society, quick to embrace the ‘new’ and more recently monetise ‘tradition’ — truncated version:
http://www.gaelscoileanna.ie/news/media/lift-language-barrier
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nod don eolach: ‘Language as activism: the big Gaelic comeback’ — http://www.newstatesman.com/2014/02/springtime-gaelic
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Some get it, some don’t.. In Ireland the latter 😦
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“Shallowness of Patrick’s Day brings home to us our lack of identity” – Gerard Howlin
“The Irish language and the Catholic faith were abandoned with alacrity. It is hard to think of comparable voluntary cultural evacuations, on such a scale, in such rapid succession, in another European country. For something as defining and identifiable as Irishness, it has proved to be extraordinarily disposable.
America, where we most intensely seek the reflection of our own identity, was the largest abattoir of the language. Yiddish, Polish, and Italian survived there for two and three generations. But Irish was almost universally discarded immediately. Skills first acquired in a rudimentary acquaintance with parliamentary politics at home were, in contrast, applied intensely. In big cities across America, and in the Irish Party at Westminster, a peasantry salvaging respectability in religion built some of the most successful political machines ever created in a functioning democracy.”
http://www.irishexaminer.com/viewpoints/columnists/gerard-howlin/shallowness-of-patricks-day-brings-home-to-us-our-lack-of-identity-261666.html
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in today’s paper: all sounds as impressive – though to be honest unfortunately soynds a bit like an evangelical prosletyser in elizabethan Ireland (book of common prayer trí ghaeilge) – all the same, expect usual commentariat among anglophone hibernians at home going nuts shouting “more gaeilgeoir grenadier propaganda…”
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/courts/double-dutch-for-irish-as-euro-election-letters-arrive-1.1724524
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City hall spokeswoman Jutta Ravelli told The Irish Times the letters “prompted quite a few calls from Irish people”.
“Most were delighted they had been translated into Irish, but they also wanted to know if we had an English version – because they couldn’t understand a word of them.”
Say’s it all really. No wonder half of Europe thinks we are imbeciles. And they do…
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