Other Gaeltachts, like those in Co Donegal and Munster, have in no way fared as well as Spiddal. Padraig O hAolain, of Udaras, says that this is due to its proximity to Galway. "It is the preference of business to locate here and we have accommodated that preference up until now," he says. For O hAolain, all this success has helped Udaras na Gaeltachta achieve its brief of arresting rural depopulation in the Gaeltacht. It has also, he claims, given a lift to the language.
Spiddal is regarded as a small, idyllic, Irish-speaking town on the western seaboard. It is a place to go on holiday. A place to indulge sentiments of national pride in a native culture. A place to cast off urban weariness in a sensual encounter with nature. The term Connemara 4 may not yet have gained currency outside the area. That Spiddal might, as an Irish-speaking town, be a greater fiction than Ros na Run, must surely come as a shock to less frequent visitors to this still beautiful place.
Community activist, Donnacha O hEallaithe, is vociferous in his criticisms of the way things have gone, of how people have moved into the area from outside and had a negative impact on the use of Irish as a community language.
"There's more prosperity and more chances, it is much more middle class and it is developing all the middle-class values that come with that, there is no doubt about that. But because of the price of property, what's happening is that the local people who are Irish-speaking are being forced out of the area and being forced into the suburbs of Galway city. It's a scandal."
Among children, English is becoming the dominant language, both in the schoolyard and on the streets after school, he adds. He is critical of Udaras na Gaeltachta and its approach to the Irish language. He argues that most of the new industries set up in the area operate mainly through English.
He calls for increased powers for the organisation to deal with vital infrastructural and housing issues, and for the use of compulsory purchase powers so that Udaras can acquire land and build affordable housing for the local Irish-speaking community. "We may be on the last generation of people who speak Irish for no other reason than it is the language they grew up in," he says.
But many young people believe that the idea of a geographically defined Irish-speaking community is something now completely out-of-date. While Donnacha O hEallaithe favours a kind of linguistic apartheid, others have a completely different conception of a future Gaeltacht. They see it as a kind of cyber Gaeltacht, something that can already be found in the airwaves and transmissions of TG4 and Raidio na Gaeltachta.
Meanwhile, at 8.30 a.m. the Galway-Spiddal road is more like a major Dublin commuter artery than the quiet coast road that it used to be. All day long cyberspace is filled with Gaeilge: the voices of TG4 journalists talking down their mobile phones.
Night falls over Galway Bay and the stream of cars fills the road again, carrying the workers and professionals of Connemara 4 home after work. They are a mixed bunch rather than a distinct class. They are a group who work through Irish and help keep the language alive, and also a group who come in from outside, bringing new influences and opportunities, and an all-pervasive anglophone culture that is gaining ground. Maybe those voices in cyberspace are the way forward, and the geographical ghetto of the Gaeltacht something that will soon exist only somewhere over the rainbow. In any case, welcome to C4.