In truth, nothing about this government’s reckless, absurd, dangerous immigration policy should surprise us anymore. Whatever their priority is, and the same applies to the useless Opposition in Sinn Féin and Labour, it most definitely isn’t the Irish people.
For example, at a time when our population is ageing fast – and our young people are leaving in droves – one focus of the authorities is on turning former local nursing homes around the country into asylum centres. The very obvious question as to what plans are being made to house and care for elderly Irish people who have lived and paid taxes here for decades never seems to be a consideration. Instead we get lectures about international obligations. What about our national obligations – or will we be met with the customary meaningless babble when our senior citizens increasingly join the record numbers of men, women and children either homeless or sleeping on the streets.
Last week, a packed meeting in Rathcabbin village in Tipperary “sent out a resounding ‘No'” to what is believed to be the government’s plan to move 30 to 40 migrants into the premises that was formerly St Kieran’s Nursing Home close to the village.
“The government has enough money to accommodate refugees,” commented one attendee, “but no money to keep nursing homes like St Kieran’s open.” Well, exactly.
This Coalition has now spent two years moving heaven and earth in order to meet its vain and rash promises to host unlimited numbers of asylum seekers and migrants – and those are two years where the vast array of problems besetting Irish people in regard to housing, and homelessness and healthcare, mostly seem to have worsened.
The authorities are continuously talking out of both sides of their mouths in this regard. We’re told housing is vitally important, yet no Irish person is being offered a modular home – currently being built at double the original projected cost – in order to alleviate homelessness or take them off the streets. In fact, a Tipperary man is facing prison for refusing to demolish a log cabin he built on his own land without planning permission.
In the same vein, we see that while Minister Thomas Byrne, who has responsibility for Gaeltacht concerns, has described the situation in regard to the national language in the regions as an “emergency”.
“Tá géarchéim ann, níl aon dabht faoi sin,” he said, according to Tuairisc.ie – “There’s an emergency there, no question about it”.
Previous Ministers had baulked at saying an emergency existed – with Catherine Martin saying Gaeltachts were “under pressure”. But, as Tuairisc noted, a former language commissioner said there was a danger Gaeilge would become a “zombie-language” if the emergency was ignored.
Yet, the same government crossed yet another Rubicon last week when it forced through the use of a hotel in An Cheathrú Rua in Conamara as a migrant centre for those claiming asylum.
As every thinking person now knows, while tens of thousands have recently arrived here claiming asylum, most are from countries that are safe or not war torn. The continued pretence in relation to the terminology being used to describe the arrivals is no longer fooling anyone. Most of those being forced onto communities that haven’t been consulted are actually economic migrants, with many likely lured here by the idiotic promises made by this government about free houses and services.
That said, this is entirely the fault of the government, not those arriving in vans into a small Gaeltacht town. It is the state that has decided that nothing is sacred – that even the long established policy of only allowing Gaeilgeoirí to live in those areas can be swept aside along with planning permission, long needs, and much else.
Hundreds of people packed the local hall in the Gaeltacht town last week to oppose the use of Óstán na Ceathrún Rua for the new arrivals. They pointed out that the town – with only 1,000 inhabitants – has already hosted 200 Ukrainains. In fact, CSO figures show that more than 1,800 Ukrainians were being accommodated in Conamara in February of this year.
Manager of Comharchumann Mhic Dara, former Galway footballer, Seán Ó Domhnaill, told Nuacht TG4 that the Government was breaking it’s own rules in relation to protecting the language in Gaeltacht areas.
He said that people without Irish were being brought to live in a Gaeltacht area, when the local people were being refused planning permission to build in the area.
“Táimíd ag cur ceist ar ais an Rialtas inniu: cén uair go bhfuil deireadh leis an teanga?” he asked “Sí Ghaeilge an teanga – sin é an difrocht idir muide agus ceanntracha eile.” “We’re asking this question of the government today: When does the language die? Gaeilge is the language – that’s the difference between this and other areas.”
FÍSEÁN Éileamh díolúine a thabhairt don Ghaeltacht i dtaca leis an líon
— NuachtTG4 (@NuachtTG4) May 29, 2024
inimirceach a chuirtear a chónaí ann pic.twitter.com/4qdQl3h4V4
It’s a question that people like Seán Ó Domhnaill should not have to ask. The preservation of our language should be a priority and forcing small Gaeltacht communities to accept newcomers who don’t speak our language is an abominable assault on our already struggling and endangered heritage.
Everybody understands the damage this can cause to an already fragile language. While the majority might not be líofa, there is a strong attachment and affection for our national language amongst most Irish people.
Dumping large numbers of people who don’t speak Irish into a Gaeltacht area flies in the face of all the policies the state is supposed to adhere to in order to protect the language. For the people protesting in An Cheathrú Rua, it must almost feel like an existential threat – because these objections surely go beyond the already valid concerns other communities raise regarding housing and safety and services.
Why is An Cheathrú Rua expected to simply accept this centre being imposed? The now-familiar sight of Garda vans and rows of Gardaí being used as a battering ram against Irish communities is all the more offensive when these centres are being forced through in areas of enormous cultural significance. As I and my colleague John McGuirk have pointed out, there are building a-plenty in Dublin 4 and Ballsbridge where migrants can be housed.
Conamara is one of the handful of areas left in the country where the remnants of what was once one of the richest and most sophisticated cultures in the world has remained in an unbroken tradition. In these communities, the gift to the country of the preservation of Gaeilge as a living, spoken language should oblige us to recognise that whatever support we can offer is repaid to us manifold.
The naysayers can sniff all they want, but to me na Gaeltachtaí are almost sacred places, where the language endured despite centuries of brutality and deprivation, where the music and seannós and damhsa was passed on; where the most important aspect of what it means to be Irish was conserved.
The Irish spoken in Conamara, as in Inis Óirr, as in Corca Dhuibhne or Gaoth Dobhair, has that easy fluidity, that rich musicality, that is usually missing from the efforts we mere imitators can muster. Losing that would be a calamity, a destruction of an intrinsic part of our soul.
And it has never been easy. Cromwell knew well what it meant to send the Irish to ‘Hell or to Connaught’: to banish the descendants of what Davis called a ‘proud and haughty race’ to literally plough the rocks of bawn.
Even after freedom was won, successive governments failed the Gaeltachtaí and the language, with movements like Misneach and others forced to fight hard for every concession, and because of the lack of support for business and innovation, it has become more and more difficult for Gaeilgeoirí to live in the areas where they were born and raised.
Almost unbelievably, the authorities have lately piled a further difficulty on those who want to raise their children with Irish in the Gaeltachtaí – who want to make the effort required for the language to flourish – by making it increasingly difficult to get planning permission to build the homes to raise their families and ensure Gaeilge can be spoken in increasing numbers.
It is utterly preposterous and also absolutely disgraceful. Níl aon ciall leis.
Breanndán Ó Beaglaoich @CosaiSeamus ag caint ar chúrsaí pleanála i gCorca Dhuibhne ar #7LÁ anocht le @beirni pic.twitter.com/jjUcTrFi8m
— 7 LÁ (@7LATG4) May 21, 2024
As Breanndán Ó Beaglaíoch said so eloquently above, what is the good of a Gaeltacht without Irish language speakers actually living there? The nonsensical planning laws and regulations are destroying the rural areas and damaging the music, the language, the soul of these special areas.
There’s a word for this sa Ghaeilge: banú – the emptying of a region: usually applied to rural areas – bánú na tuaithe. It also applies to a place becoming deserted, or depopulated, or having been laid to waste. Significantly, it also means clearance, with echoes of what happened right across the country at the time of the Great Hunger when avaricious landlord seized the opportunity to force desperate people off the land.
The videos from An Cheathrú Rua show the people of Conamara understandably upset as lines of Gardaí block the locals and facilitate asylum applicants entering the site. It is absolutely extraordinary that this has now become an all-too-familiar sight right in communities nationwide, as the government’s immigration policy is being forced through at the point of a baton.
The Gaeltacht in Connemara.
— Angela 🇮🇪 🌸 (@Angela697508) May 28, 2024
2 minibuses of asylum seekers into the Carraroe Holiday Village yesterday. Carraroe is the village with the highest population of Irish speakers in the Connemara Gaeltacht. Nowhere is sacred. Nothing is off-limits.
Video from Late Stage Ireland pic.twitter.com/3lX1arJ9ed
“Tá sibh náireach: mo náire sibh,” they say to the Gardaí. “Bhfuil caint ar bith faoi scrios Conamara?” “You are shameful: you should be ashamed: What about the destruction of Conamara?”
Local election candidate, PJ O Flaharta, has written an open letter to local TD Éamon Ó Cuiv, to say that the actions have crossed a line – “tá sé seo ag dul trasna an líne”.
The community was angered, he said, that this was happening at a time when locals couldn’t get planning to build homes, when lists for preschools were full, and when GP services were full. The people had been lied to by the government, he wrote, before asking if the Gardaí would be deployed in An Cheathrú Rua in the same way that they were in Newtownmountkennedy.
These decisions by the state – not the migrant people, but those who decide where to house them – increasingly feel like an assault on the language: though as ever it might be more that this uncouth, ignorant government simply sees housing newcomers as a greater priority than protecting our ancient culture.
As Matt Treacy previously reported, a report in the Irish journal Tuairisc revealed that “inspections carried out at six all-Irish schools found that the schools are being forced to use English in order to cope with the needs of the Ukrainian children and indeed children arriving in the schools from other countries”.
Is it obvious from listening to Raidió na Gaeltachta that teachers in the Gaeltacht areas are coming under pressure to teach in English because of the new arrivals that are being brought into the schools.
No-one wants to deny children an education – but it is absolutely deplorable that the raison d’etre of Gaeltacht areas and Gaeltacht schools is being undermined in this way by the authorities. As Matt Treacy previously said: “As with other communities there is no instinctive hostility towards children of migrants, and, as has been continuously broadcast, the welcome extended towards those children and their parents has been generally positive.”
“But what is especially egregious about this is that the children were placed in these schools by the state, who could surely forsee that inevitable outcome”.
The state is being assisted in this undermining of our language by a clutch of taxpayer-funded NGOs who are either too ideologically blind or too dim-witted to realise that you can’t keep parroting ‘refugees welcome’ for a Gaeltacht area, and then argue that the same area is a special hub for Gaeilge which deserves special support and protection.
The hotel in An Cheathrú Rua is run by Kintrona Ltd, which also owns St Johns House in Tallaght, also earmarked for migrant accommodation in Dublin. At least one director is also a director of a company already making millions from asylum accommodation.
The heroic work of the Gaeltacht areas in keeping our language alive cannot be allowed to be undermined and attacked in this way. Some things are sacred. They must remain so.