New Irish language conditions imposed on housing developments in the Connemara Gaeltacht are due to be tested today at a Bord Pleanála hearing in Furbo, Co Galway.
The appeal, which is to be held in Irish with simultaneous English translation, focuses on a 17-house scheme approved for the village of Spiddal.
Already, Bord Pleanála has questioned the extension of the language condition to less active Gaeltacht areas, by overturning the stipulation imposed by Galway County Council on a development in Claregalway.
Under the new county plan, which aims to protect the linguistic and cultural heritage of the State's largest Gaeltacht, developers must sign up to legal agreements to restrict use, including rental, of new housing schemes to occupants with an appropriate competency or fluency in Irish.
The first such legal agreement was signed with a developer in Spiddal earlier this year, and applies to 18 of 29 apartments constructed in the village. However, the clause is for 10 years only.
Now Hyberg Development, which hopes to construct a housing estate is appealing the linguistic condition.
Local residents at Bothúna, Spiddal, are also appealing the approval on several grounds, including the impact of such a scheme on existing Irish language use and the belief that the language condition isn't tough enough.
The residents point out that the legal agreement signed for the apartments in Spiddal earlier this year applied to only 62 per cent, rather than 100 per cent, of dwellings. They argue that the actual provision in the county development plan stipulates 100 per cent use by Irish language speakers.
Hyberg Development paid over €1 million for the land owned by Lord Killanin and it is arguing that outline planning permission given to the project did not include the language condition. This permission was awarded under the old county development plan.
For its part, Galway County Council argues that the old county plan did include provision for a language impact statement.
Last week, Bord Pleanála overruled the council's Irish language initiative in relation to the official Gaeltacht village of Claregalway.
It approved development of an extension and provision of apartments at a supermarket complex and deleted the Irish language condition attached by the local authority on the grounds that it was "excessively punitive".
Insp Breda Gannon said that while she recognised it was the fundamental policy of the State to preserve the Irish language and it was also an objective of the planning authority, she did not agree with imposing a legal agreement on the developer restricting occupancy of the apartments to those with a competency or fluency in the Irish language.
Ms Gannon said that Claregalway did not reflect its location within the Gaeltacht, and displayed none of the characteristics of Irish-speaking communities. She said census data showed that Claregalway compared poorly to other Gaeltacht areas in terms of everyday use of the Irish language.
Irish language activist and Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology lecturer, Mr Donncha Ó hEallaithe, welcomed the appeals board ruling.
"Claregalway is not Irish speaking by any stretch of the imagination," Mr Ó hEallaithe said. "According to the census returns, there is a greater proportion of people in Oranmore who claim to be daily speakers of Irish than in Claregalway, and Oranmore is not in the Gaeltacht."
The problem, he said, was that the development plan had changed the provision which differentiated between the non-Irish speaking areas, designated as Gaeltacht, and the actual Irish-speaking community, which stretches from Furbo to Carna, including the Aran Islands.
