An Irish Times article based on a Freedom of Information request for responses to a Department of Education circular to schools confirms that the growing number of non-national students is the main reason for the sharp increase in second level students being given an exemption from sitting exams in Irish.
I had submitted a number of FOIs requesting information on exemptions from Irish, as far back as January 2024, but none of them have been answered. So, kudos to the Times and whichever diligent and responsive person their email managed to reach in the Department’s Freedom of Information office.
That non-national students are the chief factor in the growing number of exemptions was hardly in dispute even prior to the hard evidence, but it has not been substantiated before. This had allowed sometimes ludicrous claims on the part of some language activists that the vastly increased and growing numbers of immigrant children and children of immigrant parents was somehow a positive for the language.
The Irish Times report states that the Department of Education was moved to investigate which factors had led to a rise in exemptions from 9% in 2017/18 to 12% in 2022/3. That, however, is a state average and the Department was particularly anxious to contact more than 50 schools with exemption rates far higher than that – in some cases several times the average.
There appear to be no hard statistics as I requested, and perhaps will one day receive, but the response by the principals cited in the piece tells its own tale. One principal told the Department that the high levels of exemptions in the school were due mainly to the “about 35 per cent of our pupils who come from overseas.”
The principal of another school said that “Our cohort of students has changed significantly in the last number of years. We have a diverse student population with students from 18 countries speaking up to 28 different languages. These students come from different backgrounds, including many students seeking international protection and unaccompanied minors.”
Yet another pointed out that the school had exempted more than 250 students and that this was directly due to the fact that there were a large number who were in the process of claiming International Protection. Another told the Department that the 48% of students from overseas had distorted their exceptionally high number of exemptions.
Interestingly, one of the Principals referred to the fact that the higher number of students claiming international protection in their school was due to the fact that one of the other schools in the catchment area was an Irish medium school.
The latter ought perhaps to be a cautionary heads up, as I have personally listened to a discussion on Raidió na Gaeltachta in which the question of whether Gaelscoileanna ought to “níos mó den ualach a ghlacadh”(accept more of the burden) in accommodating such students was discussed. The issue of schools within the Gaeltacht which are now having to teach English as a first language also occasionally gets an airing on RnaG.
Is this acceptable? Will it also be acceptable then that Gaelscoileanna which had to fight long and hard against the state to establish the right to teach children through Irish might also be forced to take in children whose parents will have no intention of accepting the ethos of the school? May such schools even be forced to take in such children by the state because it cannot otherwise cope?
Far be it from me to disparage anyone who does far, far more than myself in ensuring the health and survival of our language, but some people need to take a reality check. In no sane Universe is mass immigration, and particularly the huge increase in non-Irish school children going to have anything other than a negative impact on the language. Or indeed on any other aspect of Irish culture.
Some will counter with the argument that most Irish people themselves have little interest, or at least little proactive interest, in their own language. The same might be said of their relationship with Irish music and even with Gaelic sports. There is a large element of truth to that, but to use that as an excuse to justify the further marginalisation of our culture and even our standing as a people in our own land makes no sense.
It does make sense to some anti-national elements, of course, and they have already deployed immigration as another arrow in their quiver against the religious ethos of Catholic schools. Anyone who thinks they won’t be at the same game with regards to the language and sports needs to give their head a wobble.
The marginalisation of the culture is happening at the moment, and will continue to happen as the proportion of the population born overseas – currently at least 22% – and born to parents from other countries continues to rise. As even the most sober of official estimates testify to with the Central Statistics Office basing its projections over the next several decades on population growth being made up 90% of immigrants.
Anyone who believes that most of these immigrants will be Níos Gaelaí ná na Gaeil féin – Hiberniores Hibernis ipsis may feel free to send me their banking details and I will forward them the deeds for a chocolate house on Lollipop Lane.