WHEN COLM de Búrca came back to Ireland, after nearly a decade living in Spain, his two children, who were born in Barcelona, did not speak any English. His wife, Pilar Fernandez, spoke Spanish to them and he spoke Irish.
Raised with English in Dublin, de Búrca says that he is one of the small minority who "made the jump from school Irish, taught as it is, to using it as a means of communication". He spent a lot of time in the Gaeltacht before moving to Spain to teach English for two years, and then working in translation for seven.
Their daughter Nóra was thrown in at the deep end when, at the age of five, they moved here and she had to pick up English outside the home, while her parents continued to speak their native languages. She studied it as a subject at a local gaelscoil and grappled with it among her peers in the playground.
"There was a period of adaptation while she was learning to communicate to a sufficient degree, and moments when things were difficult," says de Búrca.
"But it was a fairly quick process. We didn't change our home languages at all, it would have been quite unnatural."
Her brother Oscar, who was only three at the time of the move, had a more gradual introduction to English. He and his sister talk in Spanish all the time, which de Búrca attributes to the fact that he moved back to Ireland six months before the rest of the family. At a vital stage of Oscar's speech development, he was with just his mother and sister, listening to Spanish all the time.
To help the children integrate with other Irish-speaking children when they moved here, de Búrca contacted Comhluadar, which supports bilingual families who do not have the social networks found in Gaeltacht areas.
With only older cousins here, who were not raised in the Irish language, "it provided out-of-school contact with other Irish-speaking children which was badly needed", de Búrca says. As a family, they have attended Comhluadar events all over Ireland, including parties, weekends away and the annual week-long holiday in the Kerry Gaeltacht.
It helps the mothers and fathers too, de Búrca points out. "The parents benefit from intelligent conversation. If they are halting in Irish, they improve immediately."
The director of Comhluadar, Feargal Ó Cuilinn, says the organisation, which was founded in Dublin in 1993, has 600 registered families, of which about 200 are actively using its services. He would encourage Irish-speaking parents who are interested in raising their children bilingually to use Irish in the home from day one. Learning English from the community and media will come naturally.
The development of a more multicultural Ireland has been of considerable benefit for the Irish language, says Ó Cuilinn. "Negative hang-ups which a lot of Irish people had, based on ignorance and fear, have been blown away."
Seven years into family life in Co Wicklow, de Búrca can say: "We have children who speak three languages fluently, and it will be quite a benefit to them when they go out into the world." As to whether learning more languages will be easier for them than other children, he says that certainly they are very interested in other languages.
"I think it takes away the idea that picking up a language is difficult."
• To contact Comhluadar, log on to www.comhluadar.ieor tel 01 671 5116