TG4 to be granted independence

online.ie
2005-06-30 14:00:01+01

TG4 is set to be granted independence from RTE after consultants were hired to develop an implementation plan.

The Irish language station currently operates under RTE control and is supplied with 365 hours of free programming by the public broadcaster.

Communications, Marine and Natural resources Minister Noel Dempsey said he was committed to granting TG4 independence.

"On a recent visit to TG4, I saw at first hand the organisation at work. Less than nine years into its existence, TG4 is widely acknowledged as a success. It has won prestigious prizes and awards at national and international level."

The Government has appointed the Deloitte and Touche firm as consultants to draw up a plan for the break-up.

Under the Broadcasting Act 2001, it has the power to transfer the assets of TG4 to a new public corporation independent of RTÉ, called Telefís na Gaeilge.

However, RTE has expressed concerns that TG4 is underestimating the cost of independence. It puts the value of the programming and services it provides to the channel at €73m.

The consultants will have to examine if extra funding for TG4 should be put in place to compensate for this.

TG4 began broadcasting from its headquarters in Baile na hAbhann in Galway in 1996 and now has a daily audience of around 100,000 people.

It invests over €15m annually in original programming from the independent production sector and has won the rights to broadcast live coverage of Wimbledon, the Tour de France and even the Dáil debates.

In Ireland, few safe havens for an ancient tongue

A dispute over Irish-only road signs in some towns highlights the language's weakening grip.
By Ron DePasquale Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

INIS MEÁIN ISLAND, IRELAND - On this tiny, wind-swept island at Europe's western edge, a shopkeeper makes a proud gesture toward the radio, which blares the midday news in an ancient, dying language.

Irish Gaelic is still the native tongue of some 55,000 people who live mostly along the west coast. But it is under siege. Even Inis Meáin, one of three Aran Islands off the coast of County Galway famed for old-fashioned ways, is no longer a safe haven.

"Irish is in trouble," says Cuomhán Ó Fátharta, Inis Meáin's sole shopkeeper. "When I was young, you had to learn English in school because there was no TV. I couldn't really speak English until I was 12, but now the kids are all picking it up young."

As Ireland's mother tongue struggles to survive, the government has stepped up its contentious efforts to save the language, known here simply as Irish.

The European Union (EU) gave Irish a symbolic boost when it recognized it as an official language on June 13, three decades after Ireland joined the union. Road signs in the scattered Irish-speaking towns and islands - known collectively as the Gaeltacht - have posted place names exclusively in Irish since April. And new Gaeltacht housing developments must reserve homes for Irish speakers.

Critics call these tactics costly shenanigans that only engender resentment against a language that schoolchildren must study for 13 years. The minority who become fluent have little chance to speak Irish outside the Gaeltacht.

"For the majority of students, the Irish language now exists for the sake of perpetuating its own death grip on the school system," columnist Louise Holden wrote recently in The Irish Times.

Yet on Inis Meáin, Mr. Ó Fátharta says the road sign kerfuffle won't last. Tourists will adapt, he says, and such forceful government action is essential to sustain the language. He points to the success of state-supported Irish-language radio and TV, which have grown in popularity, and the invasion of students who come to County Galway to study Irish every summer.

"People want to learn the language," he says. "That's why they keep coming."

In mostly English-speaking Galway City, pubs serve as a place for people to speak Irish. At Taffees, where traditional Irish bands play every night, an encouraging sign at the bar says, "Irish spoken here." Yet many native Irish speakers feel uncomfortable speaking their language outside their hometowns, a self- consciousness that experts say prevents the spread of Irish as a spoken language.

Irish has been declining for centuries, since families hoping to better their prospects made children speak English instead of Irish. Hoping to reverse that trend, the nation's founders made Irish the primary language and a core school subject after independence from Britain in 1921.

Yet today, just 43 percent of Irish citizens say they can speak the language, and only 1.4 percent are native speakers.

Michael Faherty, who rents bicycles to tourists on Inis Meáin, says he is realistic about the language's hold on the young. "They're turning to English now," he says as he fixes a bicycle to a background of traditional Irish music. "It's more fashionable."

Irish language activists want a bilingual nation. Some blame a curriculum that focuses on grammar and rote memorization, rather than teaching conversational Irish. Others say that the complex language must be modernized, following Israel's success in reviving Hebrew.

The growth of Irish-language schools, or gaelscoileanna, has lifted hopes for the language's survival. Outside Gaeltacht areas, 52 Irish-language elementary schools have been created since 1993, bringing the number to 120. And more books are being translated into Irish; students can now read Harry Potter in the old language.

The lucrative field of official Irish translation is also booming, thanks to a law passed two years ago that requires all government documents and services to be provided in Irish. The new EU designation created a need for dozens more well-paid Irish speakers to translate EU documents and interpret at parliamentary and ministerial meetings. Yet the government says it can't find enough to keep up with the work.

An elderly woman on Inis Meáin, wearing a traditional long dark skirt and shawl, spoke wistfully about her native language.

"I don't know who will speak the Irish after the old people are gone," says the 80-year-old woman, who did not give her name. "The youngsters are all learning English, too much English."

If Maltese is an EU language, why not Irish?

The Irish Language will finally be a working language of the European Union. Recently Jim Yates wrote a letter to the Irish Examiner calling this a waste of money and time and calling the Irish language a dead language. What follows is a response by Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc an Irish speaker living in Kinsale, County Cork:

22/06/05
If Maltese is an EU language, why not Irish?

I AM writing in response to Jim Yates’ letter headlined ‘Irish language will never be the talk of Europe’ (Irish Examiner, June 15).

Mr Yates complains about the amount of money which will be spent employing Irish speakers as translators and in publishing European treaties and documents in Irish because he regards the language as a dead tongue belonging only to fanatics and academics.

Yet Mr Yates makes no objection to the status of Maltese as a ‘working language’ of the EU, even though there are more people speaking Irish than Maltese.

Why should Irish people finance the promotion of Maltese and 19 other languages as ‘working languages’ if Irish were denied the same status within Europe?

Mr Yates states that Irish is a “European irrelevancy” and a “nonsense,” and scoffs at the idea of Irish as a ‘working language,’ let alone a living language.

Far from being “lost in the mists of time,” as Mr Yates put it, my experience is that Irish is still a spoken, living language not just in official Gaeltacht areas but throughout the whole of Ireland.

I speak Irish fluently, though I have spent my entire life in predominantly English-speaking areas of the country. At the age of 22, Mr Yates could hardly consider me a relic from “the mists of time,” though I suspect he will still attempt to label me a “fanatic” because of his own obvious bias against Irish.

As a child Irish was not a spoken language in my home, nor did I attend a Gaelscoil. I learned Irish in my spare time after I finished secondary school and by visiting Gaeltacht areas.

Today I am fortunate enough to work with people who have an interest in Ireland’s culture and I speak Irish to my workmates regularly, even though we all have varying levels of fluency.

I regularly meet other Irish speakers by chance and have had conversations through Irish in places as far apart as Cork, Dublin, Limerick and Derry.

I neither need nor seek the approval of Mr Yates and the EU to speak Irish. I have no objection to Mr Yates describing English as “the main language of this country.”

Just because Irish speakers are a minority does not mean we should be denied our rights by the likes of Mr Yates.

Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc
20 Cork Street
Kinsale
Co Cork