{"id":383021,"date":"2026-03-13T11:19:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T11:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/383021\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T11:19:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T11:19:08","slug":"irelands-power-class-has-a-colonial-attitude-to-the-irish-language-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/383021\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland\u2019s power class has a colonial attitude to the Irish language \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The State\u2019s perspective on the Irish language<\/a> and its speakers has become indistinguishable from that of British colonial rule. In the latter days of pre-independent Ireland, the British could appreciate the aesthetic cultural value of Irish and acknowledge its importance and relevance as historical heritage. They were tolerant of the symbolic appeal of Irish among the people and of its limited practice in civic institutions and education. <\/p>\n

A common cultural feature of the current Irish and the historical British rule is found in indifference about the societal viability of Irish. The sociopolitical insouciance about the social challenges of speaker communities is as evident today as it was in the pre-independent era. <\/p>\n

When it comes to Ireland<\/a>\u2019s struggling native culture, the State\u2019s institutional power class are the new colonialists.<\/p>\n

Perhaps this was inevitable following the abandonment of language-revival policies in the 1970s, given that there was no longer any clear social purpose for supporting Irish, beyond promoting it as an optional cultural aspect of the national heritage. From the 1970s, Irish was to be symbolically revered in a State and society that wished to benefit from the expanding Anglosphere. <\/p>\n

Remnants of the accumulated institutional legacy of the revival have remained, but the leadership of the Irish-language civic apparatus have not been able to advance a plausible alternative to national English monolingualisation. Irish as a private language can be encouraged, but the language was no longer to be afforded serious strategic focus aimed at protecting its social position. Pursuing the socio-economic benefits of Anglo globalisation became pivotal to the Irish realpolitik. Naively framed symbolic assertions about the historical importance of Irish to the national project were no match for the promise of English-mediated socio-economic transformation. This dynamic has accelerated due to tech-driven innovation.<\/p>\n

The official approach to promoting Irish has recently once again collided with this realpolitik. <\/p>\n

After sitting on a review of the effectiveness of language-planning schemes in the Gaeltacht<\/a> for over a year and a half, the Government recently published it, along with the Department\u2019s responses to its fairly uncontroversial recommendations. The Government is to adopt a small selection of easily implementable recommendations. This is in keeping with the ongoing line-of-least-resistance official approach to the Gaeltacht and its social crisis \u2013 another report, but business as usual.<\/p>\n

It is difficult to square assertions about a revival of public interest in the Irish language with official disregard for the demise of the last remaining Irish-speaking communities.<\/p>\n

A language revival oblivious to the erasure of its existing speaker communities is a contradiction in terms.<\/p>\n

Cultures in trouble often grasp at straws. But performative exuberance about the Irish language should not be equated with a real revival. We can applaud the success of Irish-language performers and artists, but the life and death of a language is primarily a consequence of its societal viability. The selective celebration of contemporary cultural spotlight may lead us to misread the future.<\/p>\n

Those for whom Irish is practically relevant can be categorised according to three general constituencies. <\/p>\n

Within these constituencies there are, of course, leaders and followers: <\/p>\n

1) The most powerful group is made of a second-language educated elite who have benefited from, and now operate, the educational and cultural provision of the Republic\u2019s substantial support for Irish as a second language. <\/p>\n

2) In the North, second-language activists have integrated a focus on Irish into a broader agenda of political renewal and cross-community relations. <\/p>\n

3) The least influential group comprises the contracting Irish-speaking demographic in what remains of the Gaeltacht, where its leadership is heavily dependent on that of the first group. <\/p>\n

Beyond the generous support for the second-language learning of Irish, the Republic has done relatively little to encourage productive co-operation or complementary outcomes between these language constituencies. This is observed most starkly in the reluctance of the other groups to engage with the struggles and potential terminal decline of the Gaeltacht group. The abandoned native speakers of the Gaeltacht have not found reliable strategic allies among the elites. <\/p>\n

Those who cherish Irish and its socially functioning culture will have to find a way to challenge and transcend this divide-and-conquer dynamic if Irish is to have a socially-coherent future. Perfidious Albion has met its counterpart in the Hibernian insincerity of officially promoting Irish while ignoring its societal erasure.<\/p>\n

Conch\u00far \u00d3 Giollag\u00e1in is the Gaelic Research Professor in the University of the Highlands and Islands, Scotland, and a Visiting Professor in Ulster University.<\/p>\n

Brian \u00d3 Curn\u00e1in is an Associate Professor in the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The State\u2019s perspective on the Irish language and its speakers has become indistinguishable from that of British colonial…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[19620,79,18,19,17,1109],"class_list":{"0":"post-383021","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-bob","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-media"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116221599223228121","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}