Why does the issue of the Irish language cause so many people to start talking Double Dutch? The truth couldn't be clearer. The language is dead and the emperor is completely naked, writes Kevin Myers.
Yet almost all public discourse on the matter is conducted as if Irish was strutting about like Maurice Green, and the emperor was dressed in ermine and festooned in suede.
The Dáil recently agreed that Irish should be recognised as an official EU language. The debate was, naturally, conducted in English, without a single TD apparently realising how fatuous this was. But, of course, had the debate been conducted in fluent Irish, almost no TDs would have been able to understand it or participate in it, and most hacks in the gallery would have been unable to report it.
Why do we continue to live in a linguistic never-never land? TD after TD rose to address the issue, and demanded in English that Irish be recognised within the EU, insisting moreover, how it was prospering. Even my dear friend Liz O'Donnell had apparently popped into the Blackrock Clinic for a lobotomy on her way to the Dáil, where she then enthused about how well the language was doing, with gaelscoileanna popping up like mushrooms everywhere, and Gaeltacht colleges giving young people the time of their lives.
Seamus Lantry continued in a similar hallucinatory vein in a letter to this newspaper recently, which he declared that Ireland was a bilingual society in which nearly 40 per cent of the population - 2 million people, so he means the entire island - are able to conduct their affairs in Irish. Seamus Lantry's evidence that we are bilingual is that there are newspapers, radio and television in Irish, and even this newspaper has articles in Irish.
This is like pointing to the reflection of stars in a puddle as proof there is a universe beneath our feet. We have a single Irish language station, TG4, which is watched by 3 per cent of the population. The increase from 2 per cent was achieved by showing American films in English - i.e., by cheating. TG4 received €21 million in Government grants last year, and was given €7 million worth of programmes by RTÉ free of charge. In other words, a subsidy of €28 million; and only a dozen Irish-language programmes achieved audiences of over 70,000. Most were seen by far fewer viewers; but being generous, and allowing the 70,000 as an average audience, the taxpayer subsidies came in at €400 per viewer per year.
This is economic nonsense and an insult to common sense. But it is on a par with the holy-cow doctrine of Irish life; and the holy cows here are not Brahmin cattle that may eat whatever they like without being harmed, but anything connected with what is seen as more authentically Irish than the rest of us. We even have a Government Department of Superior Irishness, also known as the Department for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, with special responsibilities for islands.
Islands. They are where real, true Irishness is felt to reside. Peig Sayers, with her pipe, her leather boots, and kelp for toilet paper, keening about the misery of island life. The children all dead; the able-bodied emigrated; only the old, the halt and the lame remaining, gibbering their ancient tales at one another through the howling gales. Of course, the key to island existence, like the key to the Irish language, is the truly Gaelic economic tool which we have already seen in TG4.
Also known as The Grant.
Gaelonomics are clearly at work in the infrastructure which the Department of Superior Irishness is installing on Inishbiggle beside Achill, where there are 40 residents, most of them old. In just over a year, the DSI has spent €1.35 million, creating slipways, a helipad and new roads - nearly €34,000 per resident. If they watch TG4, that's another €400 per head of taxpayers' money per person, never mind the pensions and the dole.
The Minister for Superior Irishness, Éamonn Ó Cuív, is now ordering Mayo County Council to build a cable-car linking the island with the mainland. What next? A TGV station, in case anyone feels like shopping in Paris, an international airport for trips to visit the cousins in Florida, and maybe a space centre, just in case any Inishbiggler feels like examining the Sea of Tranquillity? Holy cows exact funds, regardless of the economic merits of the expenditure. However, the purpose of the expenditure is not the professed goal, but the expenditure itself. That makes us feel better, as does the clamour in the Dáil to get Irish recognised in the EU - but not so much as to create an expectation that we're capable of conducting our affairs in it. We are clearly not. That's why debates about Irish becoming a recognised language in Europe were conducted almost solely in English.
Even the Donegal teacher and former Senator Joachim Loughrey, when he recently attempted a blow for common sense by criticising the amount of time spent on Irish in primary schools couldn't grasp the entire nettle. He declared that "for many children" Irish was not their first language.
Not "many", Joachim: for the overwhelming majority of children in Ireland, 99 per cent, English is their first language, and for most of that 99 per cent Irish is merely an educational obstacle that they come to loathe, as you yourself admit. A widespread detestation of Irish has been the primary consequence of the billions spent on preserving it. A pity no one in Dáil Éireann thought to mention that overwhelming and irrefutable truth.