Galway 2020: another two fingers to the Irish language
Bradley Bytes – A sort of political column by Dara Bradley
As has been highlighted on several occasions here before, language is one of the three themes of Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture.
And as such, the bid book which pitched the designation for the city and county, ‘bigged up’ the Irish language, and used Gaeilge and Galway’s bilingualism to help secure culture capital status.
But once it became ECOC, Galway 2020 wasn’t so keen on Irish. Regular readers recall how it was slow to engage with An tOireachtas, which was planning to bring Oireachtas na Samhna to Salthill in 2020 until Coronavirus forced it to cancel.
And Galway 2020 had to be pressured into hiring an Irish Language Communications Officer, who was subsequently made redundant earlier this summer.
The organisation has now confirmed that it has no plans to re-hire an Irish language officer.
An internal memo of the Department of Culture, Heritage and Gaeltacht, released in response to a Freedom of Information request, said: “Due to financial and operational constraints there are no plans to re-employ an Irish language officer for the remainder of Galway 2020.
“However, Galway 2020 will be working on a plan for the Irish speaking community and in that regard will be engaging with Irish language organisations on how best this can be achieved.”
Sounds like code for ‘we’re not overly concerned about Irish language in the Capital of Culture so we’ll let Gaillimh le Gaeilge and Conradh na Gaeilge worry about it’.
A box-ticking exercise with minimum cost and effort to Galway 2020. No surprise, really, given Galway 2020’s track record but it’s another two fingers to the Irish language.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
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