Anger Management

How wanting to seen to be doing something can do more harm than good

Without wanting to dwell on the negative unduly, it is undeniable that anger is a feature of either extreme of the spectrum on the Irish language question.

In the first place, you have those warriors who often take to the keyboards, who are extremely vociferous in how much they hate the language and resent all resources directed towards it. My theory is that the core of these people’s problem is a fundamental cognitive dissonance at not being able to speak their own language, and anger, and a desire for the removal or obliteration of this thing that is the source of the problem, is the default response.

I can understand where these people who resent the language are coming from, to an extent, in that I used to share certain aspects of this view as a younger person. I have worked as a lawyer for many years and it is a feature of interacting with Irish State agencies like the Land Registry or Revenue Commissioners that when calling on the telephone you first have to go through a phone menu as Gaeilge every time to confirm if I wish to receive the service through Irish before you can opt to speak to someone you need to deal with the query in English.

When this happens multiple times, every day, in a busy work day it adds up and can involve a not inconsiderable amount of time added to what are already tedious and time-consuming tasks. This inevitably leads to a bit of rage against the whole system.

But of course, there are multiple layers to how one might frame this frustration and anger.

On one level, there is the user experience: if you are an monolglot English speaking Irish citizen who needs to access your state services and you have to go through the Irish menu before you start every time, this becomes a chore. A non-Irish speaking family member recently recounted to me their frustration at experiencing a problem with their water supply; they needed to contact Úisce Éireann ~ Irish Water to get it fixed. They were already frustrated before they started because they had no water, the messages as Gaeilge before they could speak to someone to help them with their urgent need for help created a lot of friction for them.

The other frame for this of course is that if someone is an Irish speaker and actually wants, or needs, the service as Gaeilge, when they select the service through the language they are, as likely as not, to be unable to speak to someone sufficiently proficient in the language to help, as the only person in the office or the department who speaks Irish sufficiently well may be off that day or dealing with someone or something else at the time, while of course anyone else in the office could easily deal with the query in English.

So the recorded message gives an illusion of the availability of a service through Irish, which frustrates people who only speak English as they have to go through it every time regardless, and frustrates people who wish to speak Irish as it often appears as window dressing without any real resources being put behind delivering the services through the language in a meaningful way for the speaker.

Pre-recorded messages are cheap and easy; providing sufficient resources to be able to meet the needs of Irish-speaking service users is expensive and hard. A system that makes everyone go through the former without providing those who actually want it with the latter creates resentment on both sides and drives them apart.

There is an aspiration, I use the term aspiration here when the government might say it is a target enshrined in legislation, to have 20% of new recruits to the public service able to provide those services as Gaeilge by 2030.

I say aspiration as the obvious thing one would need to hit such a target would be to ensure that there is an education system in place that could provide the graduates to fill the roles that might achieve that goal, and no such progress is being made in the provision of secondary school education for those coming out of what is a burgeoning primary education system of Gaelscoileanna being taught entirely through the language. Many kids are coming out of primary education fluent in Irish but unable to continue that education through the language, as the secondary school places are not available for them.

This all results in a vicious circle for those wishing to just live their lives through the language of their choice, which just so happens to be the first national language of the State, whereby they cannot receive essential State services in the language in which they wish to live their lives and raise their families, their kids can’t get the education that they want through the language. As a result, the State is unable to recruit sufficient numbers proficient in the language to provide services through the language effectively. And on and on it has the potential to go, unless something is done about it.

Meanwhile, while some people express outrage at what they say the imposition of the language represents for them and the waste of public money that they see involved in doing so, those who have genuine cause to be angry are those the State is failing to serve in their, and its, own language in the first place.

P.S. This is Day 9 in a 21-Day series on The Irish Language and Its Role in Irish Identity; you can start at Day 1 here or read Day 10 here.