Praise for county’s language efforts

MORE local authorities need to follow the lead of Gwynedd and introduce Welsh as their main administrative language as part of the Government’s aim of a million Welsh speakers by 2050.

That’s the view of the Welsh language commissioner who, addressing Gwynedd’s language committee on Thursday, praised their efforts in maintaining a bilingual presence with dealing with the public but using only Welsh in most circumstances on an internal basis.

Aled Roberts, a former AM who was appointed to the post last year, went on to describe the strength of the language in Gwynedd as a “mixed picture” however, acknowledging the need to ensure Welsh was spoken by more people on a day-to-day basis.

According to the last census. 72.91% of the county’s residents had at least some Welsh skills.

“What you have done as a council, in terms of your internal administration, is encouraging and there’s room for us to spread such good practices across Wales,” he said. “When devolution was introduced in 1999 we had only one local authority that administered through the medium of Welsh, but sadly that remains the case. I want to praise you for what you do and there is also room to adopt your education policies elsewhere, but I do feel there’s a need for an honest discussion across Wales in regards to current weaknesses too.”

The commissioner noted his intention to meet officers on Anglesey next month for an update on their efforts to follow suit, with the housing and leisure services currently undergoing such a transformation. He added, however, that other western counties of Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire were still discussing such measures at this stage.

The former Liberal Democrat AM went on to acknowledge that the strength of the language was not uniform, even in Gwynedd, noting that schools in parts of south Meirionnydd, Dolgellau and Bangor all faced their own issues in terms of language promotion.

He suggested a need to “look again” at the categorisation of the language in schools.