More hot air from the Government

Two-hundred-thousand is a grand-sounding number. You can pluck it out of the air if you like, to impress your listeners. Or you can reach it by some sort of complicated mathematical progression.
I have a strong suspicion that the Government employed the former strategy when announcing their ambitious jobs’ plan for the next decade. It’s an easy number to remember: a total of 200,000 new jobs to be created by 2020.
What makes me more than a little suspicious of this target is the fact the Government has also forecast the exact same number of Irish speakers in Ireland over the next two decades.
Not 150,000 or even 195,000, mind you. But exactly 200,000 Irish speakers and exactly 200,000 new jobs.
The only difference is that the 200,000 new jobs are to be created over the next 10 years and the 200,000 Irish speakers will be found within 20 years. So we can hardly be talking about the same 200,000.
There is, however, a danger that all those Irish speakers may be working at all those new jobs in places like Australia, Brazil, India and China.
I hope I am wrong but I am more likely to be right because everything government and international agencies have been doing are more likely to force more people to emigrate.
I am indebted to local Fine Gael TD Pat Breen, who informed us through The Clare Champion last week that the Government has a plan for the Irish language, called the 20-Year Strategy. “Under this plan, the Government has taken decisions, one of which is a plan to increase the number of daily Irish speakers to 200,000 within 20 years,” he said.
He also told us the Government also had a plan to increase to two million the number of people who have a knowledge of the Irish language.
Excuse me while I take time out to ponder on these promises. How in the name of sanity can the Government possibly achieve these aims when they have other aims that will inevitably kill the Irish language in less than 20 years?
Funding for Irish language projects has been cut to the bone and if Enda Kenny has his way, Irish will no longer be taught as a Leaving Certificate subject to tens of thousands of Irish schoolchildren. The Government cannot have it both ways.
If the Government seriously plans to increase to two million the number of people who have some knowledge of Irish, then the Government needs to do something to achieve that, unless the Government believes that someone whose total knowledge of Irish amounts to something like “póg mo thóin” is a person with some knowledge of Irish.
Present Government policies – like all government policies over the past 90 years – will ensure that only a small minority will even have that much Irish in 20 years’ time.
Governments are given to kiss-me-ass promises, which sound great but mean nothing – whether they are talking about improving health care, reviving the Irish language or creating jobs.
They call press conferences, have their snaps taken while making serious-sounding announcements and the press gobble those up as if they are announcing something new and more important than was ever announced before.
This is one of the oldest tricks in the trade. Keep announcing the same good news but put the emphasis on a different aspect of it each time and some of the fools will keep swallowing it.
The reality, however, is that nothing happens. The announcement is forgotten about and the minister or ministers can make the same but different announcement in six or 12 months’ time.
Meanwhile, seriously ill patients still have to lie on hospital trolleys, the dole queues stretch further and the Gaeltacht shrinks deeper into the Atlantic.
As with the restoration of the Irish language, how can the Government possibly help create jobs when their policies are geared to ending them?
Austerity programmes inevitably lead to job closures. When people have less money to spend, local shops and services have to close down.
Some emigrate and others go on the dole. It’s a vicious circle that ensures far more jobs will be lost than can possibly be created and we are promised more of the same over the next three or four years.
The aforementioned Pat Breen is a decent man and I believe he is a person of great integrity. According to a Champion reporter Peter O’Connell, he was speaking at Kilrush Golf Club about how West Clare could go about achieving Gaeltacht status. I could break down laughing or crying here but I have too much regard for the people of West Clare to do that.
Honest Pat revealed that there is no Government plan ‘in the pipeline’ to aid the promotion of the Irish language in Kilrush and West Clare.
How then, you are entitled to ask, do they expect to see the number of Irish speakers increase to two million or even to 200,000 over the next 20 years?
If they have no plan ‘in the pipeline’ to aid the promotion of Irish in West Clare, you can chalk it down they have no plan in any pipeline to aid the promotion of Irish anywhere.
Deputy Breen went on to praise the Government’s efforts to help the Irish language and Irish-speaking areas.
However, at the end of the day, I am convinced that well-preserved pipeline contains more hot air than any real plans to create more jobs, more Irish speakers or more hospital beds.
What it boils down to is just another big government bag of wind.