The Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Mr Ó Cuív, has said it would be absolute nonsense to have areas of the Gaeltacht in which usage of Irish was no greater than other areas included in the official Gaeltacht.
On RTÉ's Morning Ireland radio programme yesterday, Mr Ó Cuív was asked about a report which showed that only a quarter of households in Gaeltacht communities now had a fluency in Irish.
The analysis of the data was compiled by the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs and was carried out at Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology.
Mr Ó Cuív said when he was Minister for State for the Gaeltacht, he asked the Government to set up a commission to look into the issue. He said he was implementing the proposals of the commission.
Asked if he was considering reducing the size of the Gaeltacht, he said he had not accepted the criteria which the commission recommended. He had never said he would not look at the issue. "I have never said at any stage that the issue is not going to be looked at," he said.
Mr Ó Cuív said he wanted to devise criteria whereby this issue might be examined. The criteria should be more sophisticated.
"There are areas of Gaeltacht in which usage of Irish is no greater than in other areas and it is absolute nonsense to have those areas included in the official Gaeltacht," he said.
Asked if he could suggest cutbacks, he said his Department suffered the same cuts as everybody else.
On house-building grants, he said the number of families being paid was minuscule at fewer than 1, 2 or 3 per cent. Housing grants applied where Irish was spoken in the home so that too would only amount to €50,000 to €100,000.
Commenting on the recommendation to have post boxes outside the home, he said this was first proposed years ago and he objected strongly then. He thought it would be a tragedy if people in rural Ireland had to go miles for their post.