NEW YORK-born comedian Des Bishop has met the Education Minister to discuss ways of promoting Irish.Bishop, who emigrated to Ireland as a teenager and whose award-winning documentary In the Name of the Fada was based on his year learning Irish in the Connemara Gaeltacht, said he wants to get more young people speaking Irish regularly.
And social networking sites such as Facebook, Bebo and new media like YouTube will be used to attract young adults to the language.
“It was liberating to be able to go to a Gaeltacht without a word of Irish and emerge fluent in the language after a year,” reflected Bishop, who won the Foras na Gaeilge prize at last year’s Metro Éireann Media and Multicultural Awards (MAMA).
“I believe that we can make an important breakthrough in the teaching of Irish by making learning more enjoyable and interactive and by emphasising the importance of the spoken word.
“Ultimately, we want to improve students’ grasp of the everyday language and make it much more popular in the community than it is, ” he said.
Education Minister Batt O’Keeffe said the comedian had shown “what can be achieved by becoming fluent in Irish in a very short timeframe”.
He added that the “goodwill” towards Irish that Bishop has generated must be built upon.
A number of measures are being considered by the department, including the promotion of new online supports for the teaching of oral Irish, podcasts for Junior Cert students, and Bishop embarking on a nationwide tour of secondary schools to create a sense of excitement around Irish in the classroom.
From next year, students can opt for a Junior Certificate oral exam which will be worth 40 per cent rather than the standard 20 per cent, while the proportion of marks for oral Irish in the Leaving Certificate will increase from 25 per cent to 40 per cent from 2012.
IRISH LANGUAGE media must be protected, Sinn Féin has urged.
Senator Pearse Doherty of the party said the recent closure of Irish language newspaper Foinse underlines the need for “robust government policies” to support developing indigenous media.
“It is unacceptable that Foinse, the last language newspaper, has been let go to the wall without so much as a whimper from the Govern-ment. And it highlights a broader issue that needs to be acknowledged,” he said.
“The Government agency Enterprise Ireland is responsible for the development and promotion of the indigenous business sector yet it does not extend this support to local media.
“It’s counterpart in the North, Invest NI, takes a very different approach and has invested its supports in local media projects.”
Sinn Féin, Fine Gael and Labour are calling for the establishment of an advisory group to make recommendations to Government on the future of print and broadcast media.
