Giving Gaeltacht areas a strong united voice while ensuring the language has a future

Ireland's most important living cultural resource - the Gaeltacht - faces an uncertain future

Ireland's most important living cultural resource - the Gaeltacht - faces an uncertain future. Traditional Irish-speaking communities have been depleted by immigration and, while there have been successes, the language maintains only a tenuous hold on the hearts and minds of many people. Something to be valued, but don't ask me to speak it.

The ambiguous relationship between Gaeltacht and State is best summed up by the lines of a drama written in 1922 by the Gaeltacht writers Seamus and Seosamh Mac Grianna: "Mar a duirt me le mo ghasur, briste sioda ar de Valera agus mise agus mo chliabh ag tarraingt mona." ("As I said to my boy, silk trousers on de Valera and I'll still be lifting turf in my creel.")

That single line neatly encapsulates the dilemma at the heart of Gaeltacht affairs: linguistic communities, which owe their survival to a native administration, estranged from that self-same administration.

An element of distrust and despondency has often governed the Gaeltacht's relationship with the State. Individual groups and writers have thundered against the region's fate with great, but short-term, effect. Too often the Gaeltacht has been unable to articulate a sustained and forceful vision of its future.

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That may be about to change.

Foram na Gaeltachta aims to provide an assembly for communities in the seven counties of the State - Kerry, Cork, Galway, Mayo, Donegal, Meath and Waterford - that still maintain native speakers. Foram first met in November 1999 to make recommendations and offer opinions on the future of the Gaeltacht to candidates standing in the elections for Udaras na Gaeltachta, the semi-state development agency charged with creating employment in Irish-speaking regions.

At the conclusion of that meeting, the 150 delegates from the Gaeltacht regions decided to hold a second meeting in June of this year to establish Foram formally and to decide on a representative structure for the future. A third meeting is planned next spring to adopt a constitution. Foram will then meet at least twice a year.

The assistant director of Comhdhail Naisiunta na Gaeilge, the co-ordinating body for voluntary language bodies, Mr Padraig O Ceithearnaigh, is chairman of the working group responsible for finalising Foram's constitution. The aims, he says, are simple: "To have a unified Gaeltacht voice on matters which concern their lives from day to day . . . that they have a voice in their own future".

Mr O Ceithearnaigh identifies three main areas of immediate concern: educational matters and the role of the language therein; planning issues; and economic issues, specifically, creating jobs that will tempt home and, more importantly, keep at home young, educated native speakers who have traditionally left never to return. This, it is hoped, will ensure the future of Irish as a spoken language and as a means of communication.

Will Foram be able to change anything though? "I think it will," he says. "It was a great help to us here in the Comhdhail that we were able to say to the Government when making proposals on the Planning Bill: `Look, the Gaeltacht community are united on this. This isn't something that only the Irish-speaking community are saying but the Gaeltacht community are looking for it too.'

"When people see that they can move forward, I think that they will come up with suggestions that are realistic; that can be achieved. There is no good in bringing forward nonsensical proposals. We want recommendations that are aimed at policies; that have been thought about; that can be sent to the parties and that can be acted upon," he says.