Irish revival will never happen if we act like Ivan

IVAN Yates’s comment that he ‘couldn’t be arsed’ to learn Irish is an unattractive mixture of bad manners, lack of civility and thickness.

Now I didn’t personally witness this particular Yates performance on Virgin Media’s Six O’Clock show, simply because when it comes to smallscreen superficiality I ‘couldn’t be arsed’. That means, of course, that neither did I see one of the show’s hosts Brian Dowling approach Yates after his comment and, in an act of extravagant agreement, shake his hand. Wow, what a rebel!

Native Irish speaker Síle Seoige was also on the show and when

Yates gracelessly expressed his disregard for the language he added, ‘I’m sorry if you’re offended’, presumably directed to Ms Seoige. Which begs the question: how sorry was he really if he went ahead anyway and said what he said.

Ivan’s terrible throwaway does remind us, however, that Irish is in the intensive care ward, with monitors tending towards a flatline.

This is down to a calamitous education policy after independence which brutalised children attempting to get their heads around the language, and in a manner that turned them off for the rest of their lives. Hence, like Yates most of us couldn’t be arsed either. We’re certainly not like the Israelis who throughout the 20th century managed to revive Hebrew to a vibrant everyday language.

Irish revival depends on a combination of political will and broadbased community support which could transform Ireland into a truly bilingual society in a generation.

This would require ALL national schools becoming gaelscoileanna, with students then going on to full Irish language secondary schools – a free gift of the language to every single child in Ireland, saor in aisce, and with zero marginal effort from children and no extra cost to the State, as proven by the extraordinary success of the gaelscoil movement.

That won’t ever happen, however, while there’s people like Ivan Yates (and the majority of us who are just like him) who couldn’t be arsed. But mainly it won’t happen because the majority of teachers don’t have the fluency to teach the language.