One of the unanticipated consequences of the housing crisis has been its impact on the Irish language, as native speakers are forced out of Gaeltacht areas by wealthy people from Dublin and other parts of Ireland snapping up holiday homes or investment properties.
Over 106,000 people live in Ireland’s six Gaeltacht areas of Cork, Donegal, Galway, Kerry, Meath, Mayo and Waterford, of whom 63 per cent indicated they could speak Irish in Census 2022 – down from 72 per cent previously. The Galway Gaeltacht has the highest proportion of daily speakers of Irish at 39 per cent. The number of daily speakers of Irish, outside education, has fallen 13 per cent since 2016.
Language is very much an ecosystem, and the environment in which it is spoken is critically important. The home is the most likely context for the use of a minority language, so any break in the chain of language transmission from parents to children (and others) has consequences for the long-term survival of the…