“Money is still dished out to absolutely hideously bad private operators…”
-Tomaltach notes the decimation of Irish language journalism. Then launches a passionate broadside against cack handed (largely bureaucratic) attempts to stem life blood of the language:
…money is still dished out to absolutely hideously bad private operators for unused online courses and the likes.
But this exposes the insanity of the way the Irish language strategy has been piloted. All sorts of grants were available for Gaeltacht schemes – even thought about 70% of the Gaeltacht is now a fiction – and money doled out on making Irish a working Eu language. Imagine – the intricies of Eu protocols being tranlsated into Irish by Irish-trained linguists in Brussels while the last remaining Irish language news publication is allowed to die. There is no more perfect symbol for the self-defeating, wrong-headed, vested-interest driven thing that is state policy on the so called preservation of the Irish language.
There is some dignity in a genuine failure, an honest best-effort which just cannot succeed. But there is nothing noble about the shambolic, incompetent, rivalrous, clique-infested, and costly failure that is our nation’s effort to preserve its still-dying native tongue.
Oh wil ye no cam back agin?