Ninety-three per cent of those taking part in a Statewide survey wish to have Irish revived or preserved, according to a report launched yesterday by Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs Éamon Ó Cuív.
The survey, The Irish Language and the Irish People, by Father Micheal Mac Greil SJ and Fergal Rhatigan, assesses the attitude of Irish people towards the Irish language, their use of it and their perception of their own competence in the language.
The findings are based on 40-minute face-to-face interviews with a random sample of 1,015 persons (85% of them Irish-born) aged 18 years and over in this State between November 2007 and March 2008. The fieldwork was carried out by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
“The overall positive message emerging from the findings of the 2007-08 survey has been the continued increase in the support for the Irish language and competence in it by respondents with higher education and more highly-prestigious occupations,” the survey report says.
What the survey calls “the most disappointing result” is the disparity between the 47 per cent of Irish-born respondents who claim “reasonable” competence in Irish and the 23 per cent who use the language on a regular basis.
Launching the Report, which was jointly sponsored by his department and the Department of Justice, Minister Ó Cuív said: “Research like this helps us to focus initiatives and policy measures more effectively.”
He continued: “Over 93 per cent of respondents hold positive aspirations for the language and want to see it either revived or preserved, while only 6.7 per cent want Irish to be ‘disregarded and forgotten’.”
The contents of the Report would be taken into account in developing the Government’s proposed 20-year strategy for the language: “It is envisaged that the 20-year strategy for the Irish language will be a blueprint for the expansion of the use of Irish in every urban and rural area in the country.
“We are working hard on this strategy at the moment and it is a key priority for the Government to implement a comprehensive strategy that will enable the language to flourish into the future.”
Pointing out that an estimated 13 per cent of the population was made up of non-Irish nationals, the Minister said: “When you look at the overwhelmingly positive attitude towards the Irish language, there is no difference in outlook between a sample of the total population and a sample of only those born in Ireland.”
Analysing the report, Father Mac Greil said that, out of the 93% in favour of Irish, “some 53 per cent wish it to be preserved and 40 per cent would like to see it revived and spoken in the population”.
Respondents who were reared in Dublin City and County were the most favourable towards the language revival among the various regions.
Asked to assess their ability to speak the language, 47 per cent of Irish-born respondents among the 1,015 interviewees claimed reasonable competence. In a similar survey conducted in 1988-89 the figure was 41 per cent.
Father Mac Greil said: “There was an increase of 6 per cent in the level of ‘reasonable competence’ over the 18 intervening years, which was significant but less than had been anticipated, because of the growth of Irish-medium schools.
“The growth seems to have been more or less neutralised by the changes in the mainstream primary and second-level schools since the 1960s, when Irish had come to be taught as a subject and very few schools taught other subjects through Irish.
“Nevertheless, 47 per cent of the random sample being able to speak Irish . . . without much difficulty must be the highest level of competence in the language in Ireland since its great demise after the famine in the 1840s.
“When measured by age, place of rearing, education and occupation, ‘reasonable competence’ is highest among the younger age groups, those reared in Munster, the highly-educated and respondents in senior occupations,” Father Mac Greil said.
