merrion street

The Government Chief Whip and Minister of State for the Irish Language, the Gaeltacht and the Islands, Joe McHugh, announced today, 13 Iúil 2018, that his Department is making available an allowance worth almost €1.7m to assist the implementation of the language planning process in the current year.

€1,513,351 of the allowance will be allocated to Údarás na Gaeltachta and €156,600 to Foras na Gaeilge to enable them to advance the language planning process as it relates to the respective organisations in the current year.

Minister of State McHugh said:

“I am delighted to make this significant allowance available to Údarás na Gaeltachta and Foras na Gaeilge to enable them to continue to provide support to the implementation of the language planning process. By commencing the implementation of language plans in up to 15 Gaeltacht areas this year, we have reached the most important point of the process - the implementation of plans at community level”.

As a result of the allowance, Údarás na Gaeltachta and Foras na Gaeilge will be able to provide annual funding to the areas that are ready to begin implementing their plans. It also means that the two organisations will be able to continue to assist other Gaeltacht Areas, as well as Service Towns and Irish-Language Networks that are currently in the process of preparing plans.

To date, 8 plans have been sanctioned and it is expected that plans for 7 other areas will be sanctioned before the end of the year. As regards the Service Towns and Irish-Language Networks, the process is under way in 7 towns and 3 networks at present and it is expected that a further 3 towns will commence the process shortly.

This allowance is being made available as a support in accordance with the commitment given in actions 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 and 2.12 of the Government's Action Plan 2018-2022 for the Irish Language, launched in June 2018. The Plan and other information in that regard are available on the Department’s website:
https://www.chg.gov.ie/app/uploads/2018/07/action-plan-2018-2022.pdf

The announcement of this funding follows measures recently announced by the Minister of State that are worth more than €1.9m in total over three years and under which specific additional investment will be made centrally available to further assist the implementation of the process in the areas of family (Tuismitheoirí na Gaeltachta) and Irish language medium early education in the Gaeltacht (Comhar Naíonraí na Gaeltachta).