Address to Seanad Éireann by Ms Linda Ervine to mark Seachtain na Gaeilge
Seanad Éireann — 2022-03-03
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Michael McDowell (IND), National University of Ireland

Cuirim fíorfháilte romhat, Linda. Déarfaidh mé cúpla focal as Béarla. My grandfather, Eoin MacNeill, was, with Douglas Hyde, the co-founder of the Gaelic League. In 1913, Douglas Hyde was sidelined a little bit from the Gaelic League movement because it was politicised. My grandfather always regretted that was done to Douglas Hyde.
I agree with Senator Kyne. One of the great tragedies about the considerable amount of time that has been put into the teaching of Irish in this jurisdiction is that when children put down the pen on the leaving certificate, they never speak Irish again and are not in a position to conduct an ordinary conversation in Irish on day-to-day matters.
I agree completely with you, Linda, that it is a shared heritage. The Irish language must not be weaponised. It must be viewed as a commonly held resource. I congratulate you on everything you are doing and wish you every success in your efforts in the future.

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Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2022-03-03/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:50:13+00:00
Sitting date: 2022-03-03