‘Is droch-lá é sin”, as we used to say in the Gaeltacht. If you are struggling to understand that, may I take this moment to say: “Congrats on your new party leader, Simon is a fine man.” For everyone else it translates, basically, as “bad auld day”. And a “bad auld day” it is when one half of the government, a party whose name is actually in Irish, can’t find anyone literate enough in the mother tongue to take up the mantle of minister of state for the Gaeltacht.
A dark auld day indeed for the Tribe of the Irish. That’s Fine Gael i mBéarla as they say, or “in English” if you really weren’t paying attention in class. It may be the party that “gets up early” but it certainly wasn’t to learn Irish.
I apologise if I am enjoying this too much, but Irish, my children’s lack of it and the fact that teaching it doesn’t seem to have advanced since FG was the United Ireland Party is a bit of a bugbear in our house. And a costly one at that. In fact, I have just interrupted writing this to explain to my 15-year-old — currently struggling to learn Irish in three different ways: in school, at grinds and online — that the government is as awkwardly placed as she is.
“Yes,” she said, “but they don’t have the Junior Cert in two months’ time.” Which is, I think, just as well for them! I had assumed, naively, that living in this modern, confident, Oscar-winning Ireland would ensure my children grew up fluent. Progress, modern methods, apps or some such combination would see them run fáinnes around me. Ach, bhí mé mistaken.
It emerges that responsibility for the Gaeltacht has had to pass to a Fianna Fail minister because no Fine Gael minister was “willing, or sufficiently proficient in the language, to take on the portfolio”.
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Well “dún do bhéal!” as a TG4 intern might say. Or “merde” as a Fine Gael minister is more likely to say. Because that’s another thing about our attempts to learn our native tongue: in French and Spanish — languages introduced to my children only in secondary school — they are flying. It really is just Irish.
So cad é an scéal? Why it is the preserve of a tiny minority who are evangelical about it, speak it at home, own copies of Seán Ó Riada albums and send their kids to a Gaelscoil? I don’t know how much has been spent on reviving it down the years but I suspect it would pay for a few children’s hospitals or an airport metro.
I acquired Irish via nefarious means. I had struggled until a teacher came to the school who was rumoured to be wanted for war crimes in France. He was a terrifying man. I learnt Irish in about a week after he joined. We only had him for one year. I’d have gotten 100 per cent if we’d had him for two, but sadly he left the country under a cloud. Despite his methods, he left me with a love of the writings of Liam O’Flaherty.
The upshot was that, years later, as part of the interview procedure for a graduate position in engineering, I took the optional Irish language interview. Ten per cent extra marks, blah, blah, you know the drill. The dominant news story of the day involved the kidnapping of the prize racehorse Shergar. I was invited to discuss its disappearance with the interview committee, in Irish.
“Cúpla oíche ó shin,” I told them, “thánig cúpla fear, agus thóg siad Shergar amach.” I eyed them as they waited, hanging on my every word. Finally I broke the tension: “Anois, níl a fhios ag éinne; cá bhfuil Shergar?”
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Is that honestly what a third-level education got me? If my FG friends are still struggling, might I suggest reaching out to your Sinn Fein opposition. Ask them “Ca bhfuil Shergar?” and then look them in the eye and say “no, seriously: ca bhfuil sé?”
