EU rowing back on Irish language rights decision

Last year's Council of Europe decision to give Irish full language status is being downgraded. By Eoin Ó MurchúEuropean Union officials have admitted that, despite the decision last June to make Irish an official working language of the Union, the implementation of this decision will be severely restricted in relation to the right to speak Irish in the parliament unless the proposals are challenged.
Under the decision of the Council of Ministers last June Irish was accorded the same full working language status as other languages, with some small derogations for an initial five-year period concerning the requirement to translate draft proposals, similar to those established in relation to Maltese.
But officials have confirmed that while translation arrangements for documents are going ahead as planned (and some 70 per cent to 80 per cent of all documentation will be covered by this) with recruitment imminent for qualified translators, interpretation will only be given on “a passive basis”.
This means that the right to use Irish in the parliament and its committees will be limited to translation from Irish to English only, with no clarity as to the issue of further translation to other languages, and no right at all to have speeches in other languages translated into Irish for the benefit of Irish speakers.
In practice, at committee level, this would mean that an Irish-speaker would literally have to engage bilingually, speaking Irish one moment and listening in English or whatever the next. Such a situation means that the recognition of Irish becomes a formal lip-service rather than a matter of practical use.
The difference arises because the standard for live interpretation – that is simultaneous verbal translation from one language to another – is higher than that needed for the translation of documents.  The National University, Galway, provides a well-recognised Irish translation course, but currently there is no separate interpretation course though there are Government plans to fund one.
A delegation of some twenty Irish language organisations has just returned from a visit to Brussels, at the invitation of Sinn Féin MEP Bairbre de Brún, where they engaged officials and MEPs in discussions on the status question, as well as lobbying for a language act in the North of Ireland to put linguistic rights there on a statutory footing.
While translation officials said little to reassure the delegation, the Irish Permanent Representation to the Union was more positive. Geraldine Byrne Nason said that no problems at all were anticipated on the translation front, while difficulties in relation to interpretation could be resolved over time with initial appointments on short-term contracts and Dublin funding interpretation courses in Ireland.
“We have a pragmatic approach to change.” she said, “We are working for the optimum but accept that there'll be a transition period.”
MEPs, however, expressed surprise when the delegation explained the situation to them, and Fine Gael's Jim Higgins promised his support for moves to ensure compliance in full with the legal obligations established by the decision.
Among these, pointed out Dr Pádraig Ó Laighin, as well as the practical right to use Irish in the Parliament and its committees, the Commission and the Council of Ministers, are the provision of Irish-language versions of EU information booklets, internet sites and so on.  “We should not have to fight for the right for these materials in Irish after the status decision has already been made,” he said.
While the delegation welcomed the support expressed by MEPs, particularly Jim Higgins and Bairbre de Brún, as well as that offered by MEPs from other countries like Malta, Hungary and Catalonia, there was concern that some Irish parties were too willing to accept EU concerns about the difficulties rather than confront and resolve any such perceived problems.
This concern, of course, was underlined by recent events in relation to Michael McDowell's introduction of the Criminal Justice (Mutual Assistance) Bill in the Seanad, when the Minister came under open attack for speaking in Irish. This indicates that for large sections of the political establishment Irish is only a rhetorical embellishment and not a real right.
Campaigners are willing to be flexible if real problems can be shown to exist, but Pádraig Ó Laighin argues that nobody knows how many qualified interpreters there are as no competitions have been held to recruit personnel. If real problems do exist, he said, then all those concerned should sit down together to see how they can be resolved and in what time frame, but unilateral derogations from what is legally required cannot be entertained.
Dr Ó Laighin acknowledged the positive role being played by the Irish Permanent Representation in Brussels, but called on the Government to be more transparent in relation to the difficulties that are becoming apparent and more assertive in getting them resolved.
Underlying this problem is the fact that very little has been done to develop the pools of qualified people needed, against a background of a continuing decline in the teaching of Irish and standards of Irish generally in the education system.
Fine Gael is attempting to address this question this weekend with a conference in the Alexander Hotel on Saturday morning.  Party leader Enda Kenny has drawn attention to the low levels of speaking ability reached after fourteen years of study in our school system, but unfortunately all attention has been concentrated on one aspect of his critique in which he suggested that Irish should be dropped as a required subject for study after Junior Cert.
Since the problems resolve around the failure to teach children at primary level to speak Irish – more primary children spend their time learning the spelling of randomly chosen Irish words than they do using these words in actual speech – Kenny's proposals look as if they would only make a bad situation worse.
Even the Official Languages Act has had only a limited impact, with most departments and local authorities being happy to get existing staff with some Irish to undertake translation and provision of Irish duties, rather than expand the context in which Irish is seen as a viable career enhancing option.
Eoin Ó Murchú is the Eagraí Polaitíochta of RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta. He is writing here in a personal capacity
∏More: The Fine Gael conference is open to the public and free of charge, but would-be participants need to register by contacting: damien.garvey@finegael.ie or 01-6184404