Irish for Protestants seen as a `disease'

The President of the Gaelic League, Mr Gearoid O Caireallain, has said that the promotion of Irish among Protestants in Northern…

The President of the Gaelic League, Mr Gearoid O Caireallain, has said that the promotion of Irish among Protestants in Northern Ireland is a "disease".

Writing in Irish in the weekly newspaper La, he said "this disease is contagious" and "widespread". La is a strongly nationalist newspaper with a circulation of under 1,000.

"There is a disease after breaking out in the North. Among Irish speakers . . . The name of the disease. The Way To Make Irish Attractive To The Protestant Community In Northern Ireland . . . Be careful, this disease is contagious," Mr O Caireallain wrote.

The Gaelic League president suggested that spreading this disease was what the Ultach Trust "is basically about". The trust was set up in 1989 to promote Irish throughout the entire community in Northern Ireland. It receives its funding from the British government and the EU. The trust's director, Mr Aodan Mac Poilin, in a letter published in La, called Mr O Caireallain's article "slovenly".

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Mr Mac Poilin also rejected as false Mr O Caireallain's suggestion that the trust was in any way in favour of "every nationalist becoming a unionist" or abandoning the foundation of gaelscoileanna.

The league president further suggested that anyone attempting to make Irish attractive to Protestants was also in favour of letting republican prisoners "rot" in jail; removing Articles 2 and 3; discarding the Framework Document and the Anglo-Irish Agreement; and making (nationalist) speakers of Irish give up the language.

Mr O Caireallain disparaged the Protestant contribution to the language in the North. Mentioning Robert MacAdam and Samuel Neilson, two 19th-century language activists, he argued that "they didn't speak Irish and they didn't speak Irish to their children".

Robert MacAdam did not in fact have children. He did, however, found the Ulster Gaelic Society, a precursor of the Gaelic League, collected manuscripts and songs and compiled an English-Irish dictionary.

The Rev Samuel Neilson also compiled an introductory grammar of the Irish language to help people learn the language and preached in Irish to his Protestant flock in Co Down.

Mr O Caireallain also argued that special educational measures to promote Irish among Protestants were unnecessary and "boring". He argued in favour of simply making "Irish-speaking life attractive" to all. Writing that "the lectures and the talks and the seminars will all kill us with boredom", he suggested that the "death of our language" was the "secret aim" of promoting Irish among Protestants.

It was Douglas Hyde's lecture, "On the Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland", which was the spark which led to the formation of the Gaelic League in 1893. Hyde was a Protestant and the League's first president. Between 1990 and 1995 the league received £932,000 in grants from the government.