We must stop forcing people to learn Irish, says Michael D

STUDENTS should be encouraged to learn Irish rather than have it forced upon them, Michael D Higgins has said.

Speaking during his visit to New Zealand, the President was asked if he believed that making Irish language lessons compulsory in schools here was ‘a help, or a hindrance’.

In his response, Mr Higgins said he believed people should be made aware of the language rather than having it forced on them.

‘I am in favour of encouraging people, bringing people to the language rather than forcing it. In the television service that I established between 1993 and 1997, the idea was give the language a second chance because they had been taught in a rather authoritative way, so I wanted people to give the language a second chance.’

He was speaking during a question and answer session at the University of Auckland.

‘You must encourage and lure them to the language, make the language attractive, the language needn’t stand for every antiquated authoritarian idea that was ever dreamed up and imagined in ancient Irish, for example,’ he said in comments reported on the Irish Times website last night.

Later he indicated that he was happy Irish was being taught in schools.

‘We have primary schools teaching Irish which is good, and secondary schools that are all Irish and teach subjects through Irish.’

Conradh na Gaeilge last night said it ‘fully supports’ Irish as a compulsory subject in schools and said that any move to make it optional to students would be a big mistake.

General secretary Julian de Spáinn said: ‘If you look at the example in England, they got rid of the requirement for language learning being compulsory for GCSE and the figures dropped to 40% of students who actually took languages.

‘Predominantly those are in schools that are in middle class to upper class as obviously they realise the benefit of language learning. It’s becoming a class divide now in England.’