Gaelic consonants

[Douglas Carswell]

I've been studying Gaelic (Scottish Gaelic mostly) and some of the other
Celtic languages and have recently wondered what is considered a Gaelic
allophone? Would an aspirated version of of a word consist of a
different phoneme in the language? An example:

    Gaelic        English translation
    cù                 dog
    mo chù          my dog
    ar cù             our dog

Would ch be considered an allophone of c in this case since it's form
depends on the preceding word? The meaning of dog doesn't change. But
what about:


        Gaelic        English translation
        cù                dog
        a chù            his dog
        a cù              her dog

Here it does change the meaning. But, it changes the meaning of the word
before it. Or I guess you could say, it changes the meaning of the noun
phrase. Would this be considered a different allophone of c or would it
be a different phoneme altogether?
To make it even more confusing, some words have no aspirated form. e.g.:

        Gaelic        English translation
        mo làmhan        my hands
        a làmhan           his/her hands

Although, I have heard that there are some dialects that make an
aspirated l a little more sonorant than a non-aspirated l which would
give a slight distinction. Again, would it be an allophone or a
different phoneme?

I wonder if anyone more familiar with Gaelic or Celtic languages would
be able to tell me a little bit about the manifestations of aspiration
on the Gaelic phonemic system.

Thanks,
Doug Carswell