The move by the Minister for Education, Mr Martin, to remove the requirement on secondary teachers to pass an Irish language test is, indeed, "eminently sensible and realistic" , as the Teachers' Union of Ireland described it yesterday. Under the Minister's plan, all new second-level teachers who do not use Irish in their everyday work will no longer have to pass an Irish test. In truth, it seems remarkable that the abolition of such a measure could have taken so long. It is no credit to this State that for years foreign teachers, those with a background in Northern Ireland, Britain or elsewhere and/or Irish people who were not proficient in the Irish language were effectively debarred from secondary teaching. What kind of sense did it make to deny, for example, an eminently qualified English or Science teacher the opportunity to teach at second level in this State because of his/her poor Irish language skills? What kind of cultural atavism was at work?
The requirement on all second-level students to pass an Irish test has been in place since shortly after the foundation of the State. It may have been a well motivated effort to boost the Irish language but for a decade and more it has seemed strangely out of kilter with the spirit of the age. This kind of compulsion is entirely inappropriate at a time when the both the Irish and British governments have been making a determined effort to build a new kind of accommodation on this island. Its removal will, as Mr Martin said yesterday, facilitate greater mobility between the Republic and Northern Ireland - for the greater benefit of education in both jurisdictions.
It is also the case that the Irish requirement for secondary teachers glossed over the poor use of the language by most citizens. According to the 1996 Census, 43 per cent of Irish people said that they could speak Irish, but two-thirds of these never spoke it or spoke it less than once a week. Other surveys have shown that only about 70,000 adults, or three per cent of the population, speak Irish on a daily basis. In this context, the requirement on secondary teachers was unfair and unjust. The irony is that this kind of compulsion and similar measures, which have now been abolished, did nothing to boost the language; indeed it may have fostered a certain resentment among some. But the extraordinary growth of the Gaelscoileanna across this State and the thousands who continue to pursue Irish language classes in their own time indicates how Irish can grow and prosper. It does not need to be buttressed by restrictive measures on teachers, or any other sector.