I have discovered the existence of a group (amazing what you can find on the Internet, with a bit of time on your hands) called iMeasc, which is basically a group of Irish immigrants and those coming from an ethnic background, now living in Ireland, with fluency in the Irish language and wishing to get more involved in promote the language, etc. Lobbying campaigns include gaelscoil places for immigrant children and distribution of trilingual phrasebooks, as recounted by John Waters in a particular article on Gaelport.com.
In fact, the above group has expressed its dismay at the removal of the Irish language requirement for entry to An Garda Síochána. I agree with this opinion. In our attempt to be “politically correct”, we are destroying our own culture to please those who have not even been included in the Irish language debate, a move which is patronizing and simply bad-mannered. Do the Irish feel it is beyond the capabilities of immigrants (many of whom already speak a number of languages) to learn the Irish language? Or maybe we are just afraid that they may show up our poor language capabilities. Imagine if they actually ended speaking Irish better than us! Which wouldn’t actually be very difficult…
