The Sunday Times – 21 August 2011

As ever more pupils find ways to drop the Irish language, is it time to make the subject optional, asks John Burns. Additional reporting: Lorraine Wemyss.

Last year, 2,297 Leaving Cert students were given an exemption from sitting the Irish language paper because they had a “learning disability”.

For 1,326 of them, however, their learning difficulties apparently disappeared when the bell rang at the end of Irish class. They not only studied French, German or Spanish – they even sat exams in them.

“It doesn’t add up,” said Bernie Ruane, president of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI).

Ann Heelan, the executive director of the Association for Higher Education Access and Disability (Ahead), agrees. “I think a cynical attitude would be right, because in those cases people are deciding they just won’t learn Irish,” she said. Alternatively, parents may feel it would take too much energy for their child with a learning disability to do two “foreign” languages, “and decide French or German is more useful”.

Niamh Collins, a former student at Christ the King secondary school in Cork, seems a typical example. Two years ago, Collins told the Irish Independent she chose to drop Irish on entering the fourth class of primary school as her family had moved from Northern Ireland two years previously, and also because she was dyslexic. To her credit, collins studied Italian and Japanese for the Leaving Cert – sitting both exams on one day – and was planning to study philosophy and Italian at university.

So it is not necessarily that students with learning disabilities “can’t” do Irish – at least half of them choose not to. “Having dyslexia does not necessarily mean you can’t learn a language,” said Heelan. “In fact, you should be able to, because you have already learnt your first language [English], so it’s just the written part that causes problems.”

Nevertheless, increasing numbers of students are getting exemptions from irish, and every year the number sitting what is a compulsory Leaving Cert subject drops.

In 2009, for example, 57,781 students sat the Laving, of whom 45,643 (or 79%) did Irish. Of the 12,138 who said “ní feidir liom”, only 5,142 had an official exemption. Nobody can tell exactly why the other 7,000 did not sit Irish, but clearly they had no intention of attending the National University of Ireland, for which the subject is a required qualification.

In 2010, there were 55,455 Leaving Cert students, and 44,942 sat Irish. Of the missing 10,513 pupils, just over half had an exemption. This year the number sitting Irish was down again, to 44,397, which more or less coincides with the number applying to the CAO, the gateway to third-level college.

So the pattern is clear: those who don’t “need” Irish to go to university don’t sit it. Some of them get an exemption, but about half don’t bother and some presumably sit at the back of “pass” class for two years, texting their friends and updating their Facebook status.

The solution seems obvious: make Irish optional for the Leaving Cert. But Fine Gael proposed doing just that in the general election earlier this year, and it proved the least popular policy in its manifesto. In the subsequent Programme for Government talks with Labour, Enda Kenny dropped the idea, settling instead for a “review” of the way the subject is taught. An Irish solution to an Irish-language problem.

An exemption from studying Irish for the Leaving Cert can be secured on three main grounds: if you were taught outside the republic up to the age of 11, or if you enrolled in school here after at least three years abroad and you are over 11, or if you are a foreigner with no English.

Such students account for about two-thirds of all exemptions. In 2009, for example, of the 5,412 dispensations, 3,293 were granted to what we can classify as foreigners, or the children of returning emigrants. As Ruane points out: “A lot of foreign nationals do take up Irish. It’s native students [who opt out]. Maybe there should be an investigation.”

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The allegation being levelled against private-school parents is that they want to secure Irish exemptions in order to free up time for their children to do more “relevant” language.

However, a more likely explanation is that parents of means do not wait around for the official National Educational Psychological Service to get to their child. Waiting lists can be up to 18 months long.

O’Leary says that psychologists make a recommendation as to how students use the extra time that the Irish exemption grants them.

The Department of Education insists that there is “no basis” for excluding exempted children “from learning another language”, arguing that “the function of the education system is to promote rather than restrict learning”.

However, in some schools, exempted pupils sit at the back of the Irish classroom. “That’s quite distracting and undermines motivation in the class,” said Ruane, of the TUI. “Teachers are not allowed to leave children unattended, and you mightn’t have an extra staff member to supervise them. So [sitting in the Irish class] is the only solution they can come up with.”

Irish remains an unpopular Leaving Cert subject, and we can’t blame Peig any more: the Kerry woman’s notoriously dreary memoir has disappeared from the curriculum. Yet affection for the language remains, with everyone from President Barack Obama (“is feidir linn”) to comedian Des Bishop (In the Name of the Fada) helping to popularise it.

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Making Irish optional at Leaving Cert level would free up time for continental languages, at which Ireland scarcely excels. The need to catch up may be becoming more pressing. “when you go to Germany or any of the EU countries, their ability to speak English is excellent,” said Heeland. “Their kids are coming out of school fluent.

“So our advantage of speaking English in an EU context is going out the window, especially as our kids are not coming out of school with a foreign language.”

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You could not mistake the atmosphere in Dublin this week: the state visit of the Queen and Prince Philip has had the full panoply of a historic occasion. It was obvious that the Irish state was wholeheartedly committed to its success, with the most formal protocols in place. Both David Cameron and William Hague have accompanied the Queen for part of the trip, which is highly unusual. The Queen agreed to visit locations associated with those who rose against the Crown — the Garden of Remembrance in Parnell Square — and showed a graceful sense of respect. It has been impressive and even moving. Yet it was also sad — at least in Dublin. Because there is a small but extremely violent minority of dissenters, Dublin city was eerily empty of people. Security barriers blocked off all the main thoroughfares. The desolation of the city streets enhanced, in a way, the beauty of the buildings. Strange to think that hardly a generation ago there were Irish politicians who wanted to knock down Georgian Dublin because it was ‘ancien regime’, and fill the spaces with concrete car parks. Thanks to the wonderful Desmond Guinness (Max Mosley’s half-brother), most of Georgian Dublin was saved, and it looked especially glorious as the royal party sped by.

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J.P. Walsh – 22 May 2011

On June 22, 1921, when he opened Stormont, King George V said, ‟I appeal to all Irishmen to pause, to stretch out the hand of forbearance and conciliation, to forgive and forget and to join in making for the land which they love a new era of peace, contentment and goodwill.” On 18th May 2011, at a State Dinner in Dublin Castle, Queen Elizabeth II said, “Indeed, so much of this visit reminds us of the complexity of our history, its many layers and traditions, but also the importance of forbearance and conciliation – of being able to bow to the past, but not be bound by it.”

I understand that England withdrew from Ireland gradually during the 19th century and this culminated in the Home Rule process, the emergence of Northern Ireland and then the Irish Free State and its evolution into the Republic of Ireland. The latest manifestation of English support for Ireland is a royal visit, following on the Good Friday Agreement and subsequent Anglo-Irish agreements. It appears to me that the London government wishes all of Ireland well. I believe that the UK government seeks and has always sought to protect the Irish population from the consequences of Irish extremist positions, tensions and actions from whatever group these arise. Royal utterances reflect this position very clearly.

I come from an Roman Catholic background and I find the church in Ireland and the Catholic population have changed in thinking and religious practice way beyond anything I would have ever dreamed possible as I matured during the 1950s and 1960s. This deep change in belief and practice has changed Ireland profoundly. I feel the mainstream Irish population is now very similar to the mainstream English population in religious attitude. Perhaps the majority of English people would describe themselves as ‘C of E’, but set foot in church only very rarely. Similarly, most Irish people would now describe themselves as Catholic but only set foot in church very rarely.

Now that Irish ‘difference’ is so much reduced, I believe that many, indeed perhaps most, Irish people have discovered that the UK is no longer threatening in any way to their sense of identity. The Irish population have in fact become more English in attitude and behaviour. This is not surprising as the population of Southern Ireland is largely English in origin anyway. Hence the success of the Queen’s visit.

I find myself asking, is Ireland now returning to the relationship with England which Ireland threw away so thoughtlessly after 1920? The Queen’s visit symbolises to me some sort of very belated effort by the Irish – and very much encouraged by London – to try to repair some of the damage. Everything to do with the Queen’s visit shouts out to me that Ireland should never have left the UK. The shared history is just too profound.

In 1911, Ireland was a united country and a free democracy. Order was kept by largely RC police forces. Ireland had religious freedom, freedom of speech and was economically pretty prosperous. Irish government was simple, cheap and efficient, and Ireland was well defended. By 1923, Ireland found herself divided into two sectarian states because of the stupidity of many Irish people. By 1931, basic freedoms were curtailed throughout the island. Many had died violently, so the most basic freedom – the right to life itself – was no longer guaranteed. Ireland was determined to cut herself off from her main markets, and sought to undermine her own defence. Common citizenship with the UK was thrown away. Eventually an uneasy sort of peace developed which ended in 1969 with the resurgence of yet more trouble. More deaths have occurred since 1969 than took place in the 1916 to 1923 troubles.

No wonder the extreme Irish republicans protest the visit as it shows the failure of this form of republicanism so clearly. Sadly, Ireland can scarcely be described as normal when the Queen has to drive around in an armoured Range Rover through cleared streets and the public are not allowed near her. Curiously enough though, the Queen was allowed to mingle with ordinary people in the streets of ‘rebel Cork’!

William Hague remarked in Dublin last week that there are 6 million UK residents who are Irish born, or with Irish parents or grandparents (figures from Foreign Secretary Hague). That fact speaks volumes.

For me, the royal visit underlines the failure of Irish dreams and the strength of English pragmatism.

Where do we go from here?