Head over to our T
Dublin County Council ban English
Read more about: Dublin 
From Dublin City Council.
Dublin City Council last night voted in favour of a motion by Councillors Tom Brabazon and Críona Ní Dhálaigh that will oblige developers give new estates in the city names in the Irish language only. The names of the new estates in Dublin city will reflect local history and topography.
Now I know people are thinking what is wrong with that. But lets just take out the nationalistic side of this and see what this motion actually does. It bans the use of an official language of this state. Imagine the outcry if it had been the other way around and Irish was banned in place names? Or they banned calling places after Protestants like Wolfe Tone Quay or Parnell square or Sean O’Casey Bridge.
This motion harks back to the days when Dev removed science classes to make way for more Irish language classes. We have tried keeping Irish alive for nearly 90 years by laws forcing the use of it and they have not worked. What has worked is people choosing to embracing it and choosing to use it.
People might wonder why I brought up Protestants in this argument. The reason being that for so long the idea of Irishness was entwined with Catholicism. Yet some of the nations greatest men were Protestants. Does the fact that they were not Catholic make them any less Irish? No. Does a housing estate named in English make it any less Irish? A friend of mine summed it up like so.
If these nationalists spent half as much time learning their history, as they do their prejudices, they’d realise very quickly that historically-speaking Irishness and a Gaelic identity are not one and the same.
Indeed looking back at Local Dublin History which the council seem to want to “reflect”. How long since Dublin was Irish speaking? Before the Pale?
This is an idiotic motion.
A bit of tokenism keeps some folks happy. There has excessive usage of Pine woods, Ash this and Hampstead that but that would be easily have sorted by means of a naming protocol committee on the city council that would have had to approve the names and allowed submissions from the public.
Oddly enough (and this is only from a superficial recollection) we don’t appear to have too many areas named after political or cultural figures from recent history post 1922 barring a few like Oscar Traynor and Alfie Byrne. Or is that impression wrong?
What Dan you expecting Bertie Ahern Drive
No your right. Suppose it is political. De Valera Street would get FG up in anger. Collins Avenue. FF
Bertie Ahern cul de sac surely…
All street names already have to be passed by the relevant area committee, following advice from the Heritage Officer, Dan. And I’ve seen area committees amend or change names requested by developers in the past.
Keith, I had thought that was the case (my local authority knowledge is a bit dated at this point) but wasn’t 100% sure.
This is a welcome decision. In an age where our elites constantly try to emphasise multiculturalism and an artificial ‘European identity’, it is welcome that at long last, someone devotes some energy to the preservation of the indigenous, Irish identity. The revival of the Irish langauge is not the preserve of Catholicism, as the late Douglas Hyde attests.
While forcing the use of Irish is a bit extreme, given that so few people speak it in Dublin, it makes perfect sense to demand that anglicized Irish names be preferred. We’ve been subjected to far too many ‘Tiffany Downs’ and ‘Millbrooks’ over the past ten years; it’s not particularly nationalistic to think this but rather a reasonable desire to resist anodyne globalized English.
is it nationalistic?
are there protestant housing estates that are going to oppressed because of this?
“While forcing the use of Irish is a bit extreme, given that so few people speak it in Dublin,”
That would be a victory for imperialism, which drove the language to the point of extinction in the first place. I beg to differ. I accept that compulsion on its own is inadequate to the revival of the language. What made it such a chore in our school system was the fixation with grammar and literature to the exclusion of oral-Irish. When a language is not the vernacular of a country on the ground, it can only be revived through a primarily oral-medium in the education system. We should also use the desire of foreign-nationals to become Irish citizens as leverage to make them become proficient to some degree in the Irish language.
Hi, just to say, I have set up a Facebook group campaigning against compulsory Irish.
Please spread it to everyone you know, as a lot of Irish people are angry about this issue, but they are rarely represented by our political and educational leaders.
I guess many of our politicians are scared about losing votes to Irish-language-enthusiasts, or lets their own love of the language override any questions of individual freedom or educational importance.
http://www.facebook.com/groups.php?ref=sb#/owen.feehan?ref=profile
Oops, sorry, wrong link from me:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=212291668092
What Feehan claims is tripe. There is not the slightest evidence that “a lot of Irish people are angry about this issue”. There is, however, a mountain of evidence–check out any public opinion poll on the matter–that a lot of Irish people are angry about the issue of Mass Immigration and the uncontrolled influx of foreigners into our country. Feehan and kindred globalizers undoubtedly support this–they want a world where there is no difference between Goa and Goleen, between Budapest and the Bronx. It’s a sickeningly banal prospect, a nightmare vision of homogeneity. Feehan, you fool–we are not all happy to be mere units of production in your mad globalized world!