[lg policy] Ireland: Renua’s Irish-language roadmap to nowhere

Thu Jan 14 16:16:51 UTC 2016

 Renua’s Irish-language roadmap to nowhere Spoiler alert! The following
article contains details about Renua’s new Irish-language policy
Wed, Jan 13, 2016, 08:00 Updated: about 24 hours ago
Seán Tadhg Ó Gairbhí

15
<http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/treibh/renua-s-irish-language-roadmap-to-nowhere-1.2493821#comments>
[image: photograph: cyril byrne/the irish times]

photograph: cyril byrne/the irish times

Last week, Lucinda Creighton’s Renua, a party unique in the history of
Irish politics in that its name makes no sense in either official language
of the State, launched its first election manifesto. I made straight for
the Irish-language policy section like it was the next episode of
Netflix’s *Making
a Murderer*.

I had been waiting more than a year for this.

You see, last January, on a rare slow news day in the dog-eat-dog world of
online Irish-language journalism, I sent an email to Renua Ireland (then
known, equally preposterously, as Reboot Ireland) enquiring about their
language policy.

I received a prompt and cheery reply informing me that “all policies were
being formulated at present” and that contributions were being sought “from
interested individuals and groups in this process”. My details, I was told,
would be kept “for future information on Irish language policy and
initiatives”.

Impressed by the new political movement’s brazen ‘I dunno! You tell us!’
approach to policy development, I sat back and waited for the latest
updates as promised.

They never arrived, and, in a way, I was glad that they didn’t, as last
Monday, when Renua finally unveiled their Irish-language policy, I got to
enjoy the same spoiler-free sense of excitement as everybody else.

“Our language, Our Heritage,” section 18.3 of Renua’s *Rewarding Work,
Rebuilding Trust*, began auspiciously enough by pointing out that though
Irish “is at a crossroads” we have the power to arrest “its slow downward
trend towards extinction”.

A little dramatic maybe, but a bracing, matter-of-fact start nonetheless.

That sharp shot of realism was followed nicely by a defiant Obamaesque call
to action: “Ireland can and will rediscover the pride it has for its native
tongue and the great cultural and artistic history that goes with it.”

Is féidir linn, mar sin, but only if we look to the modern revival of the
Welsh language, which, according to Renua, “provides a roadmap for a
revitalisation of the Irish language”.

This was disappointing.

The ‘What Would Wales Do?’ approach to the Irish language question is a
familiar and tiresome one, especially when its advocates refuse to answer
their own question.

It’s true that the Welsh-speaking community have a better-funded television
station than us and, in general, they appear to have fewer hang-ups about
their language than we do about Irish, but apart from the Super Furry
Animals, Gwenno and a more sensible approach to implementing language
schemes in the public service, is there really that much to learn from the
Welsh that we don’t already know?

What we call the Gaeltacht doesn’t exist in Wales, for example, so it’s
unlikely that Renua’s Welsh ‘roadmap’ could offer much guidance in relation
to the greatest existential crisis facing Irish – its decline in those
areas where it is still the primary language of the community.

At this stage, the lack of detail about the Welsh solution was a cause for
concern, along with my instinctive aversion to any talk of ‘roadmaps’ that
don’t pertain to actual roads.

Next up was Renua’s “path” to restoring pride in our national language.
Apparently the Welsh ‘roadmap’ was no more than a false start, and what the
“first step” on this voyage of rediscovery really requires is “a
fundamental rethinking of how we teach Irish in our schools”.

It is an old argument, but a valid one, and it is difficult not to share
the party’s indignation about the generations of Irish teenagers who leave
school “with little more than a smattering of vocabulary and grammar”.

The solution to this “appalling indictment” of our education system?

“To achieve real change, we must blend the traditional and immersive
‘living language’ elements of education with a renewed focus on grammar and
accuracy.”

This was a little fuzzy (‘real change’, like ‘roadmap’, is one for the
‘bladar bingo’ card), but I found it interesting, nonetheless.

At a time when it is considered unfashionable, foolish and even dangerous,
to use words like “grammar” and “accuracy” when discussing the teaching of
Irish, the indifference to conventional wisdom was refreshing.

Were Renua about to surprise us with a proposal for a second, more
challenging, Leaving Cert syllabus, one designed to meet the needs of
native and fluent speakers, who are currently forced to debase themselves
before the Sraith Pictiúr?

Sadly, it was not to be, and just a few ripe paragraphs and 169 words after
it began, that’s where section 18.3 of Renua’s manifesto, “Our language,
Our Heritage,” became Section 19 of Renua’s manifesto, “Foreign Policy and
Defence”.

More a sketch of an idea for a policy than a policy, “Our language, Our
Heritage” left us none the wiser about Renua’s views on any of the issues
facing the Irish language.

Do they have a policy in relation to Irish?

Well, we know they’re ‘for it’, and ‘more of it’, if possible.

In their favour, Renua can’t be accused of promising anything they can’t
deliver.
‘Real change’, whatever else it might be, is difficult to quantify.

http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/treibh/renua-s-irish-language-roadmap-to-nowhere-1.2493821

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