The Irish language is failing.

Dughorm wrote: »

Will the teaching of Irish be an election issue next year?? - it being 2016 etc etc...

Hopefully, this state's entire relationship with the Irish language will be brought to a head as soon as possible. The hypocrisy can only be tolerated for so long by people who care. It's time to be very clear about what sort of state we want, and aspire to have: a culturally English state with an Irish veneer as currently exists, or a culturally English state with an English veneer as the Irish haters want - i.e. remove all Irish language signs, stop funding the language in any way, shape or form, and throw all state resources into funding everything which supports the real English cultural identity of the state. That would be more honest, as things currently stand. The current state's lip service to Irish, a policy of undermine-through-containment (at best) of the language and promoting an Irish identity that's based on English culture over an actual Irish culture is embarrassing.
The haters of Irish would do the lovers of Irish a favour if they pushed for the mother of all public debates on this. It would be liberating.

Of course, having an "Irish" state which is culturally as English as Kent (or Finchley) would lead immediately to an existential crisis for the state and the very idea of a sovereign Irish state which is simply an English state would lack legitimacy among a substantial number of educated, cultured and historically aware people in Irish society. What's the purpose of a separate Irish state if it's no different culturally to England/Britain except in being a poor man's England? What would the new state use to make itself distinctive from England/Britain? That's the key question. It's only a small step, or generation, before people say everything would be cheaper if we were part of a state with 60 million people. A breakdown in the EU project and there will be little to no obstacle for the assimilation of the Irish state back into an English state of some sort. That, too, would be more preferable to many than the provincial cultural assertions of "Irishness" such as "we pronounce the letter h differently" which amount to cultural distinction for a large swathe of people in Ireland.

For the above practical political reasons of the state's raison d'être, I won't hold my breath on an Irish government having the integrity or moral courage to abandon its duplicitous Tadhg an dá thaobh death by a thousand cuts approach to the Irish language, an approach which has always favoured the Irish haters even if they lack the wit to understand it.