The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Ó Cinnéide takes to the field on behalf of his treasured language
TADHG EVANS HAS A CUP OF TEA IN DINGLE WITH DARA Ó CINNÉIDE AS THE KERRY LEGEND DISCUSSES HIS NEW ROLE AT RAIDIÓ NA GAELTACHTA AND THE OUTLOOK FOR HIS LANGUAGE.
THE captain’s acceptance speech does little other than cool the joy supporters feel at winning an All-Ireland. Most captains follow the bland formula favoured throughout the GAA’s 133-year history. For the orator, it’s a privilege; for supporters, it’s a watery ritual at odds with the fire and colour of All-Ireland day.
Dara Ó Cinnéide spent less than five minutes on the Hogan Stand when he accepted Sam Maguire on his county’s behalf in 2004 – but for all its brevity, it’s still revisited by supporters on YouTube each day. His address could have been especially forgettable: it followed a lifeless All-Ireland final and the re-crowning of a familiar champion – and many couldn’t even understand what he had said.
Instead, the Baile na hAbha man secured its immortality by delivering it entirely in Corca Dhuibhne Irish. Like Páidí Ó Sé 19 years before him, he climbed the Hogan Stand and carried a fading language to the kind of platform it needs but rarely receives.
Recently appointed as RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta’s Munster Regional Manager, Ó Cinnéide must provide a public service to an ever-thinning minority. He’s better-equipped than most for the challenge; he has worked at the station since 1999 and previously fronted acclaimed Irish-language programming on RTÉ and TG4.
Equally encouraging is his composure in facing what’s ahead. Having taken a gulp of tea in O’Flaherty’s bar, Dingle, he fiddles with the yellow wrapper of a Rocky Bar – all the while speaking with relish rather than worry for the future.
“If it’s pressure, it’s nice pressure,” he says as he frees the chocolate from its papery shell. “It’s not something I thought about when I started at radio; it just happened over time.
“There are a lot of people who’ve paid their licence fee and deserve access to a service through their language. When An Ghaeltacht were in the club final in 2004, there were people there from Gaeltachtaí in Donegal, Galway, Waterford, Cork – everywhere. One of the high-points of my sporting life was parading before the All-Ireland final in 2000 with Aodán Mac Gearailt, Dara Ó Sé, and Tomás Ó Sé. I looked across to the Galway lads and saw Seán Óg de Paor and Seán Ó Domhnaill. I thought, ‘The Gaeltacht is here’.
“Even when I gave that speech after the All-Ireland 2004, I saw about ten rows of Gaeltacht people in the crowd; there’s an Irish-speaking public there, and it needs a voice.
“I can’t say, ‘I want to do x, I want to do y’, because there are always constraints. But I don’t want to maintain the status quo, either. I’ll protect our impartiality, fluency, and accuracy first. Then, hopefully, people will feel they might miss something if they don’t listen to us.
“I’ll still broadcast when it’s needed. I’ll manage services, do housekeeping, and there’ll be a need to develop our service throughout Munster. It’s not just for Corca Dhuibhne. There are Gaeltachtaí in south Kerry, Cork, and Waterford, and while we all have different personalities and jerseys, we’re all on the same team.”
But boosting this particular station’s visibility is a task hampered by almost unique challenges. Some Gaeilgeoirí are naively inclined to ignore the English-speaking elephant stomping on their language. Their positivity stems from a good place – their thirst for a healthy future for the language is both unquenchable and admirable – but it may not be the most helpful approach.
Refreshingly, Ó Cinnéide is candid on the language’s present-day health and the oncoming struggles. He even chuckles at the romantic notion that English was entirely absent from his own youth.
“We also had a good bit of English at home,” he says. “Even in the school yards in Scoil Naomh Eirc and Dingle CBS, it was often English we spoke when we were out of earshot. I don’t know why – but that’s the way it was.
“I didn’t think of what it meant to have Irish until I got to third-level education. I left in 1993 for Limerick to study industrial chemistry, and I never heard a word of Irish in my four years in UL.
“But people above there would say ‘You speak Irish, don’t you?’ – and it was then I realised: ‘Jaysus, I do!’ People from Kerry would tell me they remembered playing football against An Ghaeltacht and that we were a different breed – and that made me proud!
“West Kerry has changed a lot, though. You hear every kind of language now – whereas when I was young, it was Irish nearly all day. That’s still true – but there’s less now, even west of Dingle.
“Any football team is a reflection of a locality. When I played senior with An Ghaeltacht from 1991 to 2007, there was a small decline in Irish. Today, I don’t know if player still set foot on Páirc Caide Ghallarais and think of Irish as one of the club’s four pillars. I’m a selector, I’m the PR Officer, I’m every kind of a thing with An Ghaeltacht; it’s one of the closest things to my heart – but things are changing.”
With the tea hoovered from his cup, Ó Cinnéide is yet to uncover any light for the language’s future; it might be unfair, however, to portray him as defeatist rather than balanced.
“There are always positives,” he says as he folds his arms and leans back against the stone wall behind him. “I travel to Dingle every day and this town is more ‘Gaelaí’ than it’s ever been. There’s no shop here that I can’t go about my business through Irish.
“I just think we need to put a mirror up to people. You don’t have to speak Irish – because, what you speak, at the end of the day, is an entirely personal choice. But I’d like people to realise they have something different and that it’s important to protect.”
PEOPLE FROM KERRY WOULD TELL ME THEY REMEMBERED PLAYING FOOTBALL AGAINST AN GHAELTACHT AND THAT WE WERE A DIFFERENT BREED. AND THATMA DE ME PROUD.