The Irish Independent today announces that a call-centre company based in Scotland is to create 100 jobs in a gaeltacht area . Contact4, which operates from Glasgow, is to establish a centre in the former Comer Yarns factory in Gweedore Business Park. This is being hailed as a success for Udaras na Gaeltachta, showing that jobs can be created away from the larger urban areas. The area has suffered the loss of over 1,000 jobs in the past few years, and obviously local people will welcome the provision of employment.
However there is a less obvious down side. It can be argued that the arrival of employment involving use of English risks weakening the use of Irish in the community. The company is recruiting locally, but in the past when sufficient workers or workers with appropriate skills were not available, the arrival of businesses has in fact damaged the gaeltacht areas by encouraging an influx of people with little or no Irish thus diluting the proportion of residents fluent in Irish.
But without employment the gaeltachts will wither away. Young people will leave and Irish culture will lose something irreplaceable.
Discover more from Slugger O'Toole
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
