THE FREE State’s policy of compulsory Irish in schools and some professions during the 1920s was generally opposed by the Protestant churches. The Presbyterian General Assembly made clear its opposition in 1929, as did the Church of Ireland bishop of Killaloe, Rt Rev HE Patton, who described minister for finance Ernest Blythe as “the great coercionist” for requiring all lawyers to be competent in Irish and promising to use “the jackboot or two” to enforce it.
In an editorial, The Irish Timestook up the critics' themes:
Compulsory Irish
At its closing session in Dublin, last Saturday, the Presbyterian General Assembly recorded its gratitude for the Free State’s various favours and its continued opposition to the particular policy of compulsory Irish. By this statement the Presbyterian Church takes common ground with the Church of Ireland.
Although we cannot recall any formal censure of compulsory Irish by the General Synod, the Church’s discontent is deep, and begins at last to be outspoken.
There are at least three reasons why her members, who are thoroughly loyal citizens and accept cheerfully their full share of the burdens of self- government, never will be reconciled to this compulsion.
In the first place, it is a denial of intellectual freedom. No group of Irishmen has a right to force its private enthusiasms on the whole nation or to snatch the children’s education out of their parents’ hands. As the Bishop of Killaloe said last Saturday, at St Columba’s College, “the teaching of Irish for one hour a day in the schools belonging to the Church of a small minority is a practical tyranny”.
In the next place, this compulsion is a direct cause of material hardship to the Free State’s citizens and taxpayers.
All other subjects are being sacrificed to Irish in the schools, with the result that the children’s general education is impaired; and for the average boy of the middle classes a good schooling is an essential condition of a decent livelihood. Hitherto many thousands of the cleverest boys of every generation have been obliged to seek their fortunes in Great Britain or overseas. There is not the slightest prospect that the necessity will cease to exist in our time; but today the clever boys are being handicapped with a subject which is useless outside the 26 counties and is being acquired at the cost of general efficiency. Moreover, since the Free State Government is resolved to intensify compulsion, we may assume that the exodus will increase. Already Irish is being made compulsory for entrance to the legal professions, and, if there is no national revolt against such folly, doctors, engineers, architects and bankers soon will find themselves in the same plight. Some 250 young doctors qualify every year in the Free State’s medical schools, and only a very small minority of these can hope to find employment at home; yet it is the Government’s insane proposal that all shall be compelled to waste time in the study of Irish.
Finally, the losses of compulsion are not only material, but moral. The warden of St Columba’s College has mentioned some of these, but does not exhaust the list. Compulsory Irish is “choking off the inclinations and desires of a large section of the people from co-operation in the national wellbeing”. . . It is discouraging the minds of very many young citizens from the contemplation of careers in their own land.
The material loss, perhaps, could be estimated in pounds, shillings and pence, but the local loss is as incalculable as it is irreparable. We invite the Free State Government . . . to ask itself the straight question, is the game worth the candle? Is it wise, for the sake of any ideal, to nourish a perpetual dissatisfaction, an aching sense of injustice, in the bosom of the State?
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