Údarás na Gaeltachta can be forgiven for sometimes getting confused; for it has a very confusing brief. One of its primary purposes is the creation of jobs for Irish speakers, though there is of course no relationship between economic activity and language, writes Kevin Myers
They work on different planes. The notion that job creation can function according to the language of the workforce is almost South African in its obstinate devotion to its unreality.
In the heady days of Údarás, during the era of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs when you needed an operator to ring Ring, and the roads to Irish-speaking areas were no more than tarred tracks, it was just about possible to maintain the agreeable fiction of a separate Gaeltacht economy.
Those days are as utterly gone as the Bianconi coaches. First language is no more a reason for finding a job than hair colour or length of fingernails. Look at India, where call centres are one of the major growth industries, providing detailed advice on almost anything to English speakers all over the world.
Of course, in the curious world of Údarás - which no-one will ever criticise, because it is one of the great national pieties that anything that is done to support Irish must of itself be good - such world economic realities are only lightly embraced. And if Údarás doesn't do the impossible - such as transforming Gaeltacht areas into a new Singapore - that's fine. Its job to provide economic and infrastructural support for Gaeltacht areas, not turn them into mini-Singapores.
If I read its financial report correctly, Údarás na Gaeltachta has fixed assets of over €120 million, and somewhere within that sum is the notional price of Rice House in Dingle. This building is surely a precious part of the Gaeltacht legacy. Dingle, after all, was the commercial hub of much of Kerry for centuries, and today its is probably the only town in Ireland which is less than half the size it was 200 years ago.
The Rice house was about 50 years old then, and it stands today as a testament to the resilience of the Catholic commercial classes through the Penal Laws. Thomas Rice, a wine merchant - which probably is also a euphemism for smuggler - built the house around 1750. It is the only Georgian building in Dingle and one of the few Georgian townhouses in Kerry, and was a clear declaration of the social and economic confidence of Dingle's most eminent Catholic businessman.
His son James Louis was an officer in the Irish Brigade in the Austrian service. He was one of four Kerrymen who planned to rescue Marie Antoinette at the time of the French Revolution, bringing her by relays of horses to a French port, on to a Rice vessel and thence to Dingle and chez Rice. Perhaps in gratitude the Austrian lady might have murmured: On mange riz.
But as we know, nothing came of the plan, and no house should be saved because of what didn't happen there - except the tale does tell us something about the circles these "mere" Irish-speaking Catholics were mixing in. So, Rice house is an important part of Dingle's history, and one might have hoped that Údarás would have respected that.
Not so. Údarás used Rice House as its headquarters for many years, but recently moved to new purpose-built offices, which, since they were built with taxpayers' money, we may guess cost about €10 zillion. Meanwhile, without anyone in Dingle noticing, Údarás na Gaeltachta got planning permission to gut the Georgian interior and to build some modern apartments in the back garden. With its potential value thus enhanced for speculators, late last year, Údarás put Rice House, plus planning permissions, on the market.
Now most of all us are happy to see State organisations develop a keen appreciation of the value of their assets: our normal complaint is that the State treats State property with a cavalier disregard for cost which one doesn't find in the private sector.
But there are limits to this financial prudence. I do not expect to see the Office of Public Works auctioning off Newgrange, nor the Cliffs of Moher sold off to Disneyworld. I want to see books balanced, but I don't want a heliport in St Stephen's Green or Dublin's second airport in the Phoenix Park.
For it is the function of the State to administer efficiently; it is not the function of the state to make money by bartering irreplaceable parts of the national legacy on the open marketplace. An organisation like Údarás does not have to make profits. Its job is to disburse funds and to manage its assets prudently. Nowhere in its brief is it expected to dabble profitably in the property market.
So why did a State-run company, answerable to the electorate of the Gaeltacht, and to the Minister, decide to seek planning permission to wreck one of the very few Georgian houses built by an Irish speaker (as Thomas Rice must have been)? And most curiously, how on earth did this happen without anyone in Dingle apparently knowing about it? (We need not ask why Kerry County Council gave planning permission: fish swim, and county councils give planning permissions.)
John O'Donoghue has called for Údarás to withdraw the house from the market, but bids are now in. Údarás members meet on Friday to decide on whether to sell Rice house, with planning permission to gut. After they've followed John O'Donoghue's advice, they might well ask: how could such a dreadful project come so close to completion? And is this what Údarás is all about?