Foras na Gaeilge

“Foras na Gaeilge is centralising resources around a small number of Dublin-based organisations”

Soapbox on April 18, 2014, 11:06 am | Readers 109

Janet Muller is CEO of Pobal an advocacy organisation that has spearheaded work on Irish language rights since the Good Friday Agreement. Hers is one of the Northern Ireland based organisations facing a restructuring will see all publicly funded Irish language groups headquartered in Dublin and away from Belfast. It is now 3 months since Foras na Gaeilge announced its decision to end core funding to all northern-based core funded Irish language groups and to transfer this funding to 6 …

The North short-changed in Irish language shake up

Concubhar on January 17, 2014, 4:48 pm | Readers 82

So yesterday (Thursday) Pobal, the Irish language advocacy group for Northern Ireland, had its critique of the failures of the Stormont Assembly and Executives regarding the Irish language strategy endorsed by no less an organisation than the Council of Europe. But today the cross border body, Foras na Gaeilge, announces the new ‘lead organisations/ceann eagraiochtai’ for the promotion of Irish on an all Ireland basis and none of the NI based organisations, including POBAL, Iontaobhas ULTACH, Forbairt Feirste or Altram …

Cuts and splits: How the Irish language community’s most effective advocates are being silenced

Concubhar on January 9, 2014, 9:44 pmComments Off | Readers 2079

At an event on the Newtownards Road on Thursday to open Belfast’s newest Irish language centre, Linda Ervine, sister in law of the late David Ervine, spoke of ‘An Ghaeilge’ as her language. It was nothing to hide or be afraid of speaking, an attitude which might come as news to some unionist politicians. While there was a celebratory mood in Skainos, the good humour belied the darker clouds gathering for Belfast based organisations which have contributed in various ways …

Shock horror! Independent publishes its own Irish language news supplement

Concubhar on September 26, 2013, 12:37 pm | Readers 297

If you told me ten or five years ago that the only Irish language newspaper of any description would be provided by the Irish Independent, I would have ended up spending the rest of the day in intensive care. Independent News and Media have long been regarded as one of the arch enemies of the Irish language, and not without cause. Derision of the Irish language has been a default position, it seems, of nearly all the columnists – …

Farewell to Gaelscéal

Concubhar on February 5, 2013, 11:44 am | Readers 280

I am writing this article in English (though I will probably write something similar in Irish for Gaelscéal) because I want slugger fans, the majority of whom are English readers, to read it and engage with the issue, rather than get bogged down in whether or not it should be in Irish or English. As poet Michael Hartnett wrote in his poem, Farewell to English: But I will not see great men go down who walked in rags from town to town …