Only a quarter of households in Gaeltacht communities now have a fluency in Irish, a new survey has found. So poor is the level of Irish that the language is on the "brink of extinction" in four Gaeltacht counties, the hard-hitting report predicts.
Analysis of data compiled by the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs shows that only 25 per cent of eligible households in the total area designated as "Gaeltacht" were judged to have a fluency in Irish during the 2001-2002 school year.
The analysis shows that the number of Irish-speaking families with schoolchildren in the Gaeltacht counties of Mayo, Cork, Waterford and Meath has dropped to 53.
The analysis was carried out by Mr Donncha O hEallaithe, a lecturer at Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, who says large areas of the three remaining Gaeltacht counties of Galway, Donegal and Kerry show the same trend.
The analysis was published in this week's edition of Foinse, an Irish-language newspaper.
Mr O hEallaithe says language policy in the Gaeltacht has been "a complete and absolute disaster". He predicts that unless radical measures are taken more communities will lose the language in the next 10 to 20 years, including the Cois Fharraige area of Galway county which the draft development plan is now trying to address.
"It is an indictment of successive Irish governments that at the foundation of the State there were 250,000 fluent Irish speakers living in Irish-speaking or semi-Irish-speaking areas, but the number now is between 20,000 and 30,000," he said.
According to Mr O hEallaithe the level of Irish use within families is "very low", ranging from 1 per cent in Galway suburbs to 3 per cent in the Barna and Moycullen areas of Galway and Dungloe, Co Donegal, to 5 per cent in the Ballinskelligs area of south Kerry and 8 per cent in south-west Donegal around Glencolmcille.
The analysis was of figures compiled by Roinn na Gaeltacht officials for the Sceim Labhairt na Gaeilge (SLG) programme, a scheme which gives a €260 annual grant to those families with schoolgoing children who use Irish as the language of the home.
Data for the school year 2001-02 show that of the estimated 8,613 families with eligible children in the Gaeltacht, only 2,143 of them were deemed to be using Irish as a language of the home under the scheme.
Officially, over 80,000 people live in recognised Gaeltacht regions.
However, Mr O hEallaithe's study shows that only 20,000 people live in Gaeltacht areas in which a majority of the eligible households are judged to be Irish-speaking.
These are south Conamara, (10,500 inhabitants); north-west Donegal centred on Gaoth Dobhair (6,000); Corcha Dhuibhne, west of Dingle (2,000); the Aran Islands (1,250); and a small pocket around Ceathrú Thaidhg in north-west Mayo (500).
The study shows some 50,000 people live in Gaeltacht areas where less than 10 per cent of the households with children are Irish-speaking, and 10,000 live in Gaeltacht areas where no households qualify for the full grant.
