Conradh na Gaeilge

Can anyone help with this query in relation to the O Neill surname?

In what circumstances is Ui Neill used As Gaeilge and when is Ui Niall used?

I am unsure if Ui is a gender issue (female) as opposed to O for male
and is Ui Niall a variation of Ui Neill ?

Go raibh agaibh .

Go raibh maith agat.
So 'Caoimhin Ui Niall' would not be Kevin O Neill then or Kevin Annett for that matter ?

pog it wrote: »

Beo ar mhaoiniú, measaim.

I don't like to be negative but it appears to me that they seem to do the minimum and get by. I hope I'm wrong but I see far more energy and investment put in by Gaelchultúr who run a similar organisation. At least that's the impression they have left me with.

Do Gaelchultúr not confine themselves to Irish language classes? Conradh have a lote more going on besides that.

pog it wrote: »

That's the thing, I am more involved with the Irish language than the majority of people and even I don't know what they do. That's pretty bad from a marketing and publicity standpoint so they are not allocating resources properly.

In one way it would probably be easier to list what they dont do when it comes to the Irish language. Conradh, its branches or its members are involved in just about everything when it comes to the language, most of it is admitidey away behind the sceens but I dont think anyone could fairly say they don't do much. (Even if they don't agree fully with what they do actually do)

When I was in UCD, Gaelchultúr were offering weekend immersion classes and had gone to the trouble of organising this through the Irish language officer there. We just had to pay a token amount. That weekend was a big part of what got me learning Irish. There is just more initiative from them as they operate as a private company. They put regular newsletters together, have a shop, and offer a far superior array of Irish language classes than the Conradh does. They also have beo.ie. Well the director of Gaelchultúr is behind both as far as I know so we can link them in.

They have a website, plenty of info about them to be found quite easily on the web.

When you were in UCD, you dident happen to come accross the Cumann Gaelach by any chance? Thats a branch of Conradh. Conradh work quite closely with the third level Cumanns and the work they (along with a few other organisations such as Glór na nGael) have put into that area is one of the main reasons that there has been a significant growth in the number and size of Irish societies at third level over the last five years.

Ever come accross Radió Rí Rá? - that was Conradh. The 'Ceol' CD's that came out every year (Now 'Rí Rá' CD's) That was Conradh through Raidio Rí Rá. Seachtain na Gaeilge - That was Conradh, still organised from Conradhs head office. Oireachtas na Gaeilge - That was Conradh. Lá Mór na Gaeilge in Dublin a few weeks back - That was Conradh. The first Lá Mór back in 2004 seeking EU status for Irish, that was Conradh too. The campaign and protest agains the FG policy of making Irish optional during the election back in 2011, that was Conradh. They have a string of Youth Clubs around the country under an organisation called Ógras, also organised in their head office. They work with Ciorcal Comhrás all over the country in their 'Is Leor Beirt' campaign. They work with the colastaí Samhraidh every summer through their 'Glac Leis' campaigh. (They run a series of special discount cards for using Irish under the same name) They have Club Conradh and An Siopa Leabhar in Dublin, Club Áras na Gael in Galway as well as several other centers in different towns and cities. As far as I know Conradh was involved in the group behind the Cultúrlann in Derry too. They are involved in organising a campaign called the 'Gaelbrathacha' for secondary level schools. (Gael-Linn organise the campaign for Primary level)
Rith 2014 is largely Conradh and was organised from their head office (Other organisations like Glór na nGael were involved too, quite a lot of cooperation goes on for projects like this) And they lobby the government on every aspect of Irish Language policy, for example Leo Varadckar announced a little while back that he will be bringing in a new layout for road signage that makes Irish equal to English, that was Conradh.

And of course historically the feathers in their cap include starting the revival in the first place, establishing a modern Irish literature and playing an important part in establishing the state.

I accept that I may be overdoing the talking up of Conradh here.
That is not to say that I think Conradh is without fault, indeed they have plenty of faults, but you should not dismiss them too quickly, they do an awful lot more than most people realise.

Take the Conradh's bar in Harcourt St. for instance. Whenever I've been in there it's been dead. They should be looking at a better spot than being stuck out that far from the city centre but for years they have just sat on it.

Club Conradh seriously does not have the kind of money to rent a premisis in a different location. In an ideal world sure, but in reality they are doing well to simply stay open.

And... I'm not alone. No surprise. See this from a post on politics.ie:

Regarding CnG. To me as an Irish speaker and enthusiast (yes, despite my pessimism) I find CnG invisible except when they surge forward in a reactionary rage as they did in relation to FG's proposal. Personally I oppose the proposal but the whole debate should be rational, facts based. Instead the language organisations tend to be very conservation and slow to debate the realities of the state of the language: like living in the fallacy where there is an official Gaeltacht with special status even though the vast bulk of it is English speaking. In this way, I firmly believe that organisations like CnG are more of a hindrance than a help. They refuse to engage in a honest debate that acknowledges how critical the situation now is in relation to the survival of Irish as a community language. I sometimes get the feeling that some of them don't care as long as the funding keeps coming. Even if Irish were to die, and they became guardians of a dead language, a celtic latin, instead of a living one, I get the feeling they wouldn't care one jot.

There is just no point in staying in denial. Same with the level of Irish of national school teachers. Not blaming them entirely either, but. Just not enough people give a damn, even those getting paid by the state.

It's just the facts of things and time to get heads out of the sand.

http://www.education.ie/en/Publicati...ool_08_pdf.pdf

Quote:
During the evaluation the inspectors noted the oral language ability of the teachers. They found that 3% of the teachers had a poor level of spoken Irish, 20% had only a fair ability to speak Irish, 55% had a satisfactory standard and 22% had a high standard of Irish. These figures reflect the indings of Harris et al. (2006, p.128), based on a national survey, in which 25% of teachers in ordinary primary schools described themselves as poor speakers of the second language.

However, inspectors considered that almost half of the teachers observed in this evaluation had difficulties with their proficiency in the Irish language or with their ability to teach Irish

From:

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/educa...1667065?page=1

GaelMise wrote: »

You are wrong
I'm in my early 20's and got involved with Conradh through involvment with an Irish society at third level. All of my direct experience of Conradh has been over the past 5 years.

Your use of the winky face is just arrogance. I said that you 'came across as ....'

You had commented on why the conradh was founded in the first place but that has nothing to do with how the conradh is run today. The original founders and people involved were volunteers and were far more active in attracting people to their organisation. And by people I mean people from all walks of life.
Not just in universities not just those who are seek them out themselves.
In any case my point re my own experience in UCD was that Conradh na Gaeilge was not presented to me, Gaelchultur was, and Gaelchultur receive a lot less funding from the state than CnaG. I only did my masters in UCD so I wasn't there that long relatively speaking, but that is my experience.

How do you think that happened?

You are missing my point again as you do consistently, same re the state of education, You ignore what you want to ignore.
It 'happened' because new staff were brought in to run the campaign. And new funding allotted. Why did the Conradh not just run it themselves? There are enough people already employed there to have done it and yet they employed someone new, full time, to run Seachtain na Gaeilge at one point. That to me is a pretty sad reflection on them. I don't know who asked for the funding, etc. but they do need to justify their existence, so their approach has been to survive via one off events and then sit on their arses for the rest of the year.

My point is that day to day the Conradh is not doing enough to justify their annual funding. I have no interest in putting my name forward for jobs that are determined by anything but ideals and competence, like every other quango in Ireland.

The thing is that Conradh's modus operandi is not to go off on solo runs, they almost always work with others to get things done, but they are very often the driving force behind campaigns and new projects.

If that is their best selling point, then they are getting too much in annual core funding, outside of the extra funding allotted for the specific events.

The thing is though that if you have an idea for what they could or should be doing, you can get them to do it if its a good idea.

I can get them to do it if it's a good idea? Everyone has ideas, there is no shortage of ideas out there, they just are not getting implemented.

Again, there is a large amount of work that they do that is behind the seenes, but is important none the less.

And 'again' we all know they work behind the scenes, the point is that it is not a good enough effort to warrant the kind of funding they get. I, we, are not getting value for money.

Just a few days ago 50 RTÉ journalists made a complaint to senior managment about the lack of coverage of Irish Language issues, I wonder where the idea for that came from.

Where did it come from? Have you a source that says that someone from the Conradh went round all 50 or so journalists and lobbied them to do that?
Or is that someone from the Conradh, working so hard behind the scenes, talked to someone in RTE that they knew were sympathetic to the cause, and asked them to do it?

Post some sources please, otherwise it is just your opinion.

They are looking for a new chairperson currently as far as I know, if you think a better job can be done with the resources available, put your money where your mouth is and put your name forward. Its very easy to hurl from the ditches, you might find that its not quite so easy if you actually had to carry out that which seems so easy to you right now.

Actually they have the funding behind their backs to carry out anything they want. Just excuses flying around. They don't have enough in that core team doing enough. Not a chance of an outsider getting elected anytime soon and I ain't joining any state funded organisation where it would take 10 years at least to get any chance at a position to make a difference.

Simply put, do you have any idea how much rent alone would cost for a more central location?

Do you? I have already said that 1 good year in a more central place would be better than 10 stuck in a damp and dingy basement in Harcourt Street.

The funds for such a thing simply are not available, Club Conradh is not exactly rolling in funds, keeping the doors open is an achievement on a yearly basis, never mind pipe dreams like the above.

Hm. Any sources for what funds they actually receive?
Present that information and full and let people decide for themselves.

Maybe I'm wrong, perhaps you can workout a viable alternative, find a better location and find the money to pay for it somewhere, if you can I have no doubt that they will listen to you very carefully, but I won't hold my breath.

Won't hold your breath for what?

The pressure brought to bear at the time by the campaign lead in the main by Conradh is what brought the issue to a head. Organising a thousand students to protest outside FG head office and geting a petition signed by nearly 20,000 people to put into the hands of their Education spokesman in is no mean feat, not to mention the contact made with FG TD's the lenght and breadth of the country that they organised and directed.
Had Conradh done nothing at the time it is my opinion that we would now be seeing the implementation of that policy

And it is my opinion that FG would be more swayed by what the majority of the country would want than a petition from the Conradh. The vast majority of Irish people are pro the language. FG don't want to risk a backlash.

In any case, who says that making Irish optional would have done any harm?
Maybe the country needs the kind of debate about the language that making Irish optional would have brought about.

pog it wrote: »

Your use of the winky face is just arrogance.

:rolleyes:

You had commented on why the conradh was founded in the first place but that has nothing to do with how the conradh is run today. The original founders and people involved were volunteers and were far more active in attracting people to their organisation. And by people I mean people from all walks of life.

The vast majority of people involved with Conradh na Gaeilge are volunteers, they only have a handfull of staff directally working for the organisation itself.

For someone who has said themselves that they don't know much about the organisation, you seem very willng to pass juggement.

Not just in universities not just those who are seek them out themselves.
In any case my point re my own experience in UCD was that Conradh na Gaeilge was not presented to me, Gaelchultur was, and Gaelchultur receive a lot less funding from the state than CnaG. I only did my masters in UCD so I wasn't there that long relatively speaking, but that is my experience.

That is largely because Conradh na Gaeilge and Gaelchultúr are quite different organisations. While Conradh does organise classes, that is not its primary focus. Why should Conradh na Gaeilge be 'presented' to you or other third level students? Specifically trying to convince people to join Conradh is not one of their main priorities.

You are missing my point again as you do consistently, same re the state of education, You ignore what you want to ignore.

I ignored your point on Education because it makes no sense, Conradh is not the Dept. of Education, they are not responsible for the teaching of Irish or how bad the curriculum is. If it happened that they agreed with what is happening and wanted to see no change to the status quo then you might have a point, but that is not true, Conradh have been pointing out the problems and suggesting reforms to the system for years.

It 'happened' because new staff were brought in to run the campaign. And new funding allotted. Why did the Conradh not just run it themselves? There are enough people already employed there to have done it and yet they employed someone new, full time, to run Seachtain na Gaeilge at one point.

Sorry, how do you know that the staff employed by Conradh are sufficient to handel their existing workload and the work of administering SnaG as well. For someone claiming to no little or nothing about the organisation yesterday, you seem to have quite detailed knowledge of the running of the organisation now for your claims to be credible.

That to me is a pretty sad reflection on them. I don't know who asked for the funding, etc. but they do need to justify their existence, so their approach has been to survive via one off events and then sit on their arses for the rest of the year.

On what basis are you claiming that they have not, do you believe that the state is giving Conradh money to support the running of SnaG on a whim? Its just for the craic is it? This kind of nonsense unsupported argument is just not credible. Sorry.

My point is that day to day the Conradh is not doing enough to justify their annual funding.

What is their annual funding? Would you not need to know that, and what its spent on before you can begin to pass judgement on it being justified of not?
The bigger question though is what is it that you think they should be doing in your opinion that they are not already?

If that is their best selling point, then they are getting too much in annual core funding, outside of the extra funding allotted for the specific events.

They get to much money because they tend to cooperate with other organisations? What?

I can get them to do it if it's a good idea? Everyone has ideas, there is no shortage of ideas out there, they just are not getting implemented.

No shortage of people happier to sit on their backside complaining that an organisations is not working on some unstated project rather than engadge with that organisation to get such a project going. If you want to see something happen, I would suggest that you get up of your backside and do something about it rather than waiting for someone else to do it for you, and complaining that its not being done. What you dont seem to get is that the vast majority of what Conradh is and does is voulenteer. The work I and hundreds of others do with Conradh, is not paid. So you might forgive me if I am a little put out by someone complaining that something is not being done. If you see something that needs to be done, do it, thats what the rest of us are doing with Conradh.
So what is it specifically that is not being implemented in you opinion?

And 'again' we all know they work behind the scenes, the point is that it is not a good enough effort to warrant the kind of funding they get. I, we, are not getting value for money.

Again, what kind of funding do they get, and what kind of effort are you expecting from them to warrent it?
How the hell can you judge value for money if you dont know how much money and what you expect to get for it?

Where did it come from? Have you a source that says that someone from the Conradh went round all 50 or so journalists and lobbied them to do that? Or is that someone from the Conradh, working so hard behind the scenes, talked to someone in RTE that they knew were sympathetic to the cause, and asked them to do it?

It comes from the fact that engadging with the English language media is one of the objectives that Conradh has as part of the campaign following on from the Lá Mór na Gaeilge protest. Establishing contacts amongst journalists that are favourable to Irish is part of this. If you want access to the actual documents on this you can join the working group thats behind the campaign, you are more than welcome to. Just email julien@cnag.ie

Actually they have the funding behind their backs to carry out anything they want.

Club Conradh, as distinct from Conradh na Gaeilge is a members bar (thats the type of licience they have). It does not get direct state funding (except a once off grant a while back from the Dept of Arts, Herritage and Gaeltacht to help clear some debts and prevent to club from haveing to close) and barely has the funds to stay open. They do not have the funds to do anything they want. Far from it.

Just excuses flying around. They don't have enough in that core team doing enough. Not a chance of an outsider getting elected anytime soon and I ain't joining any state funded organisation where it would take 10 years at least to get any chance at a position to make a difference.

You seem to be a bit uninformed as to how Conradh works. Firstly they have quite a small number of staff, and given that you seem to know very little about the organisation overall, I simply dont see how you can know what kind of workload they have. I on the other hand do have some insight and can honestly say that they work quite hard, often well outside of normal office times.
Next Conradh is a democratic body that is responsible to its members. You become a member, you have a say in what Conradh does. You can also get elected to its steering committee, which is elected from amongst its membership every year at its Ardfheis (the members elected to this committee are not paid). No ten year wait for promotion, you just have to convince people to elect you. Hell, you could get yourself elected president of the organisation if you liked. (also not paid)

Do you? I have already said that 1 good year in a more central place would be better than 10 stuck in a damp and dingy basement in Harcourt Street.

Conradh opend a Café on Harcourt street for a while, the rent was in six figures. One can only assume that a more central location would cost at least as much. And as stated earlier, Club Conradh does not have to funds to do anythig like that.

Hm. Any sources for what funds they actually receive?
Present that information and full and let people decide for themselves.

No source, I know they got a one off grant to wipe out some debts because I read it in Gaelscéal last year. And I know that they don't have much money from talking to people involved in it.

Won't hold your breath for what?

For you to come up with a viable way to move Club Conradh to a more central location.

In any case, who says that making Irish optional would have done any harm?
Maybe the country needs the kind of debate about the language that making Irish optional would have brought about.

Well, what happened in England when they made languages optional in their education system is what convinced me that making Irish optional would not be a good idea. Numbers declined significantly, several Universities had to stop requiring a second language because it became discrimiatory against those from poorer backgrounds (Private secondary schools chose to keep languages compulsory, Public schools often stopped teachng them at all.) And many languages depts at third level had to be closed or cut back due to lack of students.

This is just an example of an artical on the issue, there are plenty more out there if you are interested.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-13314147

Since the last government made learning foreign languages optional in England from the age of 14 there has been a decline in the numbers of students studying them to GCSE level.
The proportion of students taking language GCSEs has fallen from 61% in 2005 to 44% in 2010.
In 2001, about 347,000 pupils sat GCSE French, but this has fallen by nearly half to fewer than 178,000 in 2010.

pog it wrote: »

Why shouldn't it? Why is that left to organisations like Gaelchultur who get a lot less funding than Conradh na Gaeilge?

Gaelchultúr is an organisation whos primary focus is organising classes, obviously one of their main activities is going to involve getting people to attend those classes.
Conradhs primary focus is not about organising classes, so going out of their way to recruit people is not one of their main activities.

I can guess what their annual funding is and has been. Millions of euro are in the kitty for the Irish language organisations.

Since you are in the organisation, maybe you can tell us definitively? With some actual sources to back it up?

Grant from Foras na Gaeilge 2013: €380,500

Other income including from classes, collections, advertising, sponsership, sales etc amount to €320,000

Giving a total budget for the year of just about €700,000 (of which just over half came from public funding)

They have many volunteers and people getting paid to do the job already.
Obviously somebody in there has tried to bring about proper ideals for the organisation but it isn't working. I'd be an idiot to think I could put myself forward as president this year, win the campaign, and change history.

Sorry, but you have never said what it is you think 'proper ideals' for the organisation should be, or what it is that they should be doing that they are not. This is important as there may well be good reason for why they are not doing what it is that you happen to think they should.

Nope. I just honestly said that I don't know everything there is to know about it, but I do know they get the most funding of all the orgs, from a multi million kitty, and I do know the current output.

Nope, Glór na nGael gets way more funding than Conradh. Obviously you know very little about the current output if you think they sit on their asses all year.

pog it wrote: »

http://www.gaelport.com/default.aspx?treeid=37&NewsItemID=5918



Best of luck to him of course.

That was back in 2011, he just stepped down a few weeks ago.
He will be taking up the role of president of Dáil na Mumhan now though.

pog it wrote: »

It's disappointing that you didn't mention the contesting of the presidency in 2010 as there was a young chap who actually did campaign hard to get the role, was chairperson of the Dublin branch of the conradh, and still failed.
The then president wanted to stay on in the role, fair enough, not at all criticising anyone for that, but this is telling:
“Ó hAdhmaill is too young yet”.

I'm in the same age group. So say I mounted a campaign, put months into it, only to find that the voters in the conradh constituency obviously disregard youth as an advantage.

Cut and thrust of politics, you hardily expect him to say his rival for the job is perfect for the role.

The guy who won that year is one of the leading figures in the organisation, and had quite a bit of support within the organisation, he would have been hard to beat regardless of who was running against him. Still, it is a democratic organisation and the potential to infludence it is there all the way through. This is not true of Gaelchultúr as far as I am aware.

pog it wrote: »

We're not comparing Gaelchultur and the Conradh on every level as they are not equal organisations as one is only part funded by the state and one is completely funded by the state. Apples and oranges.

Is Gaelcultúr compleatly funded by the state?
As I made clear in an earlier post, Conradh is only partfunded by the state.

As regards that election, of course political opponents don't talk up one another, but using a guy's age against him sends out the wrong message and is not the way to go about attracting newcomers to an organisation like the Conradh which desperately needs young people to join it.

Why do you think Conradh 'Desperatly needs young people to join it'
As a young person involved in Conradh I see no significant problem, there is quite a strong core of young people involved these days.

I'm sorry to have a low opinion of the conradh but a few one off big events that get special funding and extra staff to run those events does not save face.

Sorry but 'a few one off events' is far from all that conradh does, feel free to stick your head in the sand and delude yourself into believing that they do nothing more than this, but it does not change anything in reality.

An gal gréine wrote: »

The current president, Cóilín Ó Cearúill can't be much over 30 and the general secretary, Julian de Spáinn hasn't hit 40 yet!
I'm not a member but I don't think you give them the credit they deserve.

And Julian de Spáinn is one of the hardworking ones and someone I admire. I've heard him speaking out on several occasions on various radio stations and on tv. But he can't do it alone.

I'm on a one woman crusade here achieving nothing so I'll leave it over to every one else.

Oh wait, they're all in the English medium parts of the forum!!!