Irish politicians sound better in English

It emerged last week that during the first year of Irish being an official language of the EU, less than 30 minutes of Irish – or Gaeilge – was spoken in the European Parliament. Interpreters are kept on stand-by to relay words from Irish, so according to the calculations made by the Irish Times (in English) 30 minutes of Irish over a year means €13,000 to translate each minute. It seems that six of Ireland's 13 MEPs have never used Irish while speaking in Parliament. Three of those are members of Ireland's main opposition party, Fine Gael, which is aligned to the centre-right EPP-ED political group. Their national party leader, Enda Kenny, who was on a visit to Brussels last week, said: “There's a lot of spoof being talked about the Irish language.” He blamed the government's “insincere” approach to pushing Irish as an official language at EU level but not providing more funding for projects in Ireland to revive the language. Avril Doyle, one of his MEPs, said: “I don't have good Irish...I wouldn't do justice to my electorate in the east [of Ireland] if I tried to deliver a speech as Gaeilge.” She also suggests that MEPs of other nationalities, including Finns, Swedes and Slovenes, speak in English to get their point across more clearly. “People use English to get across the most persuasive points as possible,” she said. Tell that to the French.