WITH the release of the Irish-language biopic Kneecap, the nomination of Irish-language films at recent Oscars and more and more Irish celebrities using Irish, you’d be forgiven for thinking the Irish language was in an assured and popular place.

However, the material conditions of Ireland’s 20,000 daily speakers inside its designated language districts, the Gaeltacht, starkly contrast with a language in vogue. These sharply defined conditions felt by its native speakers (especially the youth) reaffirm the urgent point laid out in the Kneecap film’s final message: a minority language dies every 40 days on this planet.  

After centuries of colonial subjection and 100 years of independence in 26 of its counties, Ireland’s once nationwide majority language is now reduced to scattered regions along its most westerly coasts.

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Brought about by colonialism and then hastened by capitalism, this lingual shift was brilliantly summarised by James Connolly when he said: “Capitalism did more in one century to destroy the tongue of the Gael than the sword of the Saxon did in six.”  

In the early 1920s, with nominal Irish independence achieved in four-fifths of the country after a brutal counter-revolution, the rulers of the Irish Free State did little more than window dress with their newly found sovereignty when it came to addressing the poverty faced by Irish speakers — yet Irish as a living language in the Gaeltacht has still survived.  

But unless serious intervention by both government and community actors is carried out today, the Gaeltacht will die.   Officially abandoning Gaelic revival as a policy in the 1970s, Ireland’s state has adopted an unwritten approach to the language today — that of a tolerable decline. At every census, each Gaeltacht, bar maybe one or two, demonstrates a slight loss in daily speaker numbers.

If a republic was serious about decolonisation, then you would think it would double down on supporting its Gaelic heartlands. This is not the case in a bourgeois political environment obsessed with electoralism. With the 20,000 daily speakers scattered across many electoral divisions, very few politicians care about courting the Gaeltacht vote.

Lumped in with the Department of Tourism and Culture, the Gaeltacht regions are dealt with by the state in a manner that would resemble the managing of a cultural relic, not a living socio-linguistic community, treated as a type of theme park to be preserved in perpetuity ignoring the fact it is being irreversibly ravaged by budgetary austerity measures, over-tourism and short term housing rentals, namely Airbnb.

The state body charged with handling Gaeltacht affairs has had its budget slashed by 75 per cent since 2008. The Irish government wants to declare prosperity and economic stability in the run-up to an election, yet it still has to reverse huge budgetary cuts.  

Gaeltacht regions are predominantly coastal. Traditional employment consists of fisheries and small-scale farming. More modern employment comes in the form of Irish-language television productions and facilitating Irish-language immersion courses for summer students.

While some Gaeltacht regions experience unemployment rates worse than the most deprived urban centres, the issue today isn’t so much employment but rather the unavailability of housing for native speakers.

According to a recent TV documentary on housing in the Gaeltacht, a little under half of housing in these regions are holiday homes. Often forced onto poor land in punishment for partaking in rebellions against the English crown, you could forgive far-back generations of Gaels for thinking their descendants would be able to pass the torch of lingual succession in perpetuity because where they lived was of little interest to British and Irish elites.

That interest changed, however, especially in recent decades when moneyed holiday-home buyers bought up huge amounts of private land and housing units that they barely lived in.

In the Conamara Gaeltacht in August 2024, there were 221 Airbnb short-term rentals in comparison to four long-term rental availabilities. The government’s response to Airbnb’s detrimental effect on the rental market is one of sheer denial and deflection, with former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar accepting undeclared lobbying money from Airbnb.

Government disinterest and neoliberal economics combine into a lethal socioeconomic force pitched against organic intergenerational language transmission for Gaeltacht locals.

One of the strongest linguistically yet territorially smallest Gaeltacht communities, found in County Waterford, hasn’t seen a single social or council housing unit built in over 20 years despite huge numbers on the waiting list. By denying housing to low-income Irish speakers, the effects of neoliberal decision-making are felt sharply by the rural proletariat in these districts.

If a young Gaeltacht local is fortunate enough to come from a family with land, then they’re up against ever more stringent planning laws with little to no consistency. Refusals and planning appeals to local government can cost young families years of heartache and sometimes financially burden them thousands of euros before planning is permitted.  

Irish language speakers and Gaeltacht residents are not ones to take a beating lying down. A proud history of struggle inspired by the fight for equal rights by the US civil rights movement and the civil rights marches in the north of Ireland gave rise to the militant Gaeltacht civil rights movement in 1969, which sought representation in the form of a Gaeltacht elected assembly.

Led by Marxist republican Mairtin o Cadhain, the movement did not achieve all of its aims, but the Gaeltacht civil rights movement birthed a nationwide Irish language radio station and the Gaeltacht Authority.

A positive example of state intervention can be found even earlier, with the creation of the County Meath Gaeltacht in the east of Ireland when in 1935 the government provided housing and land to 27 families from across the western seaboard. This lone experiment was a success, and the descendants of those families still speak Irish today.

The founding of the Meath Gaeltacht back in the 1930s was carried out in a much poorer Ireland but demonstrates what is possible with serious political will. With huge budgetary surpluses recorded this year, the Irish government no longer has the excuse for the necessity of fiscal prudence, but yet, if left unchecked, it will continue its moribund approach to the Gaeltacht.

Owning large land banks, the Gaeltacht Authority has been shamed and questioned by local Gaeltacht development bodies and activists as to why it doesn’t provide housing estates for speakers. Last year, it finally decided to commit to housing on a small site but has yet to move towards actual development.

In recent years, a housing campaign founded by young and old activists across the Gaeltacht regions called Banu (meaning “desolate” but in other more positive contexts “dawning”) has campaigned strongly for the prioritisation of housing for Gaeltacht residents. Banu, at the time of writing, is carrying out a Gaeltacht-wide tour to rally locals to their cause.

It is yet to be seen whether a new dawn can be found for the Gaeltacht or if it will end in desolation. One thing is assured — the Irish language will not die without a fight.

Morgan de Moinbhiol is a Gaeltacht native, socialist republican and a member of the Irish language rights group Misneach — @MisneachAbu.