Pay to speak Irish

cork said:
Why should the few who make the effort shoulder those who couldn't be bothered?
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Are you suggesting that Irish speaking civil servants experience a burdensome level of extra work because of the amount of enquiries they get in Irish?
 
It really does not metter about the number of people that look for services in Irish. The Irish Public service should provide services in the 1st Official language.


Staff that take time to learn the language are carrying those that could not be bothered. Staff at all levels - need to have a good grasp of the language.


But I agree that it will come down to the atitude of staff towards the language and the ability of management to put appropriate structures in place for staff to learn the language.

The plans called "schemes" that many public sector organisations have come up with are pretty poor.

Low in both specifics and ambition.

What incentives would encourage staff to learn Irish or Is their love of the language enough?
 
The public service provision of a servide through Irish is bound by this which covers many of the points being made in this thread.
 
The 2003 Act is one element - but there is also the 37 constitution.

So, How to encourage the public service to learn Irish?
Stick or carrot?

Will their love of the language safice.

It will all depend on staff atitudes anyway as there will be no major sackings because of staff inability to speak Irish.
 
No they'll be zero sackings - but how will staff be encoraged to take up the language?

Brian Cowen has already recognised the language as one of his priorities.

Going back to square 1 - Is extra payment the solution or will staff be willing to learn the language as part of their jobs?
 
So, How to encourage the public service to learn Irish?
Stick or carrot?
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Forced or encouraged?

If someone wants to learn Irish, then they can pay for lessons and learn it. This is the same for Irish music lessons, dancing, swimming etc.

As it stands, I fail to see what benefit this brings. I can certainly see the negatives (yet another waste of public funds, waste of time, annoyed staff etc.)

Maybe learning Polish might be more useful.
 
Just noticed this.
cork said:
The focus of public sector workers should be on the public and the country.
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I'd put my money on them all learning Irish before they focus on the public or the country.
 
Purple said:
Just noticed this. I'd put my money on them all learning Irish before they focus on the public or the country.
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I know your head might explode, but do take the risk of reading this thread so that you learn that at least some public servants do a great job for their customers.
 
Complainer said:
I know your head might explode, but do take the risk of reading this thread so that you learn that at least some public servants do a great job for their customers.
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Did you miss the "" ?
I have often posted here that many civil and public servants do an excellent job. They do so despite the system they work within and not because of it. For this they deserve ample praise. I reserve my ire for those who seek to set the bar as low as possible and keep it there. In many (but not all) cases it is the unions who do this. While said unions have an important role to play in protecting employees from abuses their obstructionist mind-set outweighs the positive aspects of their work.
Apologies for taking the thread off topic.
 
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cork said:
It really does not metter about the number of people that look for services in Irish.
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Really? So everyone should throw infinite amounts of time and money at the language, just to keep a few people happy?

From the last census, there were 4,240,000 people in the country.
1,657,000 claim to be irish speakers, and of those 150,000 speak it daily or weekly.

So to deal with 3.5% of the population, do we really need the entire civil service trained to speak irish fluently?
 
Interesting statistics there Berni.

Any idea of how many people out of those 150,000 that speak Irish daily or weekly, do not understand English?
 
I would think the number is tiny.
That only 56% (36,500) of irish speakers in the Gaeltacht use it daily, and 38% of these use it only in school, says a lot...
 
Berni said:
So to deal with 3.5% of the population, do we really need the entire civil service trained to speak irish fluently?
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We live in Ireland - surely the language should be supported by the state?

Brian Cowen has put it down as one of his 4 priorities.

Less than 50,000 use the language on a daily basis (outside of education) - the language is hanging on by a micro fibre.

That said - the population is extemely supportive of the language when polled.

Hebrew was revived making services available in the language.

But should we give civil servants additional payment or should their iniative be rewarded when interview time comes around?
 
cork said:
We live in Ireland - surely the language should be supported by the state?
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It is. If you contact the gov in irish, they will respond in irish.

You seem to want every civil servant to be able to deal with you in Irish, rather than the far more reasonable step of having services provided to you in irish (albeit by two people)
 
cork said:
But should we give civil servants additional payment or should their iniative be rewarded when interview time comes around?
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Neither. They should be rewarded for doing their job well.

The state already throws a disproportionate amount of time and money into 'supporting the language', if you ask me. With precious little return, to judge by the results.
 


Well said. Indeed learning polish or chinese could be more useful. There is more chinese spoken in this country than the Irish language. More than enough money - billions of it - has been wasted over the decades trying to force people to speak Irish as it is, and it has not worked. The taxpayer deserves better than pumping more money in to the dead Irish language, while people are lying on hospital trolleys etc, our school kids are in damp prefabs etc.

Lets halve the govt printiing costs + save the environment !
 
Berni said:
It is. If you contact the gov in irish, they will respond in irish.
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But if you visit - services should also be in Irish.

The state already throws a disproportionate amount of time and money into 'supporting the language
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But as a % cost over service provision - It is not that large.

Lets halve the govt printiing costs + save the environment !
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Agreed - emphises should be on the spoken language by the public sector and not professional translation outsourcing services.

There is nothing wrong with an Irish public services being bi-lingual.

They should be rewarded for doing their job well.
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But without having our 1st language then this would indicate problems in providing services to those who look for the service.

There needs to be structures in place to give us a bi-lingual public sector. Still undecided about carrot v stick. To date, I don't think there have been either sanctions or reward in the public sector to encourage bi-lingualisim.
 
cork said:
But as a % cost over service provision - It is not that large.

But without having our 1st language then this would indicate problems in providing services to those who look for the service.
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So after you interrupt everyone from their jobs, spending plenty of time and money to teach them Irish, and still nobody wants to use the service in Irish, would you then consider that a good result?

Do you have any data on how much unfulfilled demand there is out there?
 
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