Online project listing over 500 new residential developments named solely in Irish nationally

national | miscellaneous | press release

Tuesday August 25, 2009 22:27

by Darren J. Prior

Tionscadal ar líne ag liostáil os cionn ná 500 ainmeacha i nGaeilge d'fhorbairtí cónaithe nua

See: www.slideshare.net/darrenjprior/presentations.

Online project listing 541 new residential developments named solely in Irish nationally over the last few years

"In the early 90's Galway City councillors passed a motion that in order to help foster a strong bilingual city that all future new residential developments would be named solely in Irish. Shannon councillors have also passed in effect the same motion and it is council policy in Cork County Council that all social developments be named in Irish also although in the latter the policy does not often get implemented.

In 2003 Irish language marketing organisation Gael-Taca in Cork came out with a free service to property developments to give them names in Irish for their choice of names. Since then over 200 developments have been named in Irish through them. Every developer on the island has received an information package from Gael-Taca; many have been contacted twice and a good few of them- although largely in Munster only- were rang. Pádraig Ó Cuanacháin their Marketing Director who died last year was the man responsible for dealing with the developers although others in the organisation actually came up with the names.

Recently as I am working part-time and have a good bit of free time I went through some property websites (mainly daft.ie) for several counties and made slideshows of the developments named in Irish and uploaded them on Slideshare.net. I told myself that I would just do a few. But as seen as I have a lot of free time I said "Sure why not do them all?"

The counties with the most developments in Irish over the last few years are:

Galway 81
Cork 87
Donegal 33
Westmeath 18
Longford 18
Leitrim 24
Wexford 25
Clare 39
Kerry 33
Monaghan 17
Cavan 24
Tipperary 20

I was in Gael-Taca and had the honour of working with Pádraig Ó Cuanacháin. I sent him down the names of around 250 developments over a four year period and he contacted the developers commending them on their decision to choose an Irish name(s) and informing them of their free service for the future if they wanted to use it. Given that Irish was for most years since independence a sign of failure I find this development(s)- largely over the last 5/6 years- to be brilliant. It shows that the language has economic value and is popular if people choose to make use of out it as a marketing tool.

I think that all councils- county, city and town- should have naming committees. Several counties have them. The use of names in Irish should be officially encouraged although not required unless councillors vote to name all of their developments in Irish. And, no, I am not going to bother lobbying them about the latter. All developments should in my view be named bilingually at a minimum with equal status in terms of size and font on the entrance pillars to new developments. The developer of course should be free to market whatever name he wants.

I also believe that the Government should address the question of the position Irish has on most of our road signage. According to the Department of Transport Road Signage Guidelines the Irish placenames and words have to be written in italics and in a smaller font than that of the English. We should have equal status between both national languages.

I have believed for many years and it's particularly more relevant now that the Irish language is a great symbol that unites us all. The first ever twenty year national plan for Irish is coming out this year- Plean2029. If the plan is not good then I believe it will take a new, fresh Government to take care of promoting it.

www.slideshare.net/darrenjprior/presentations

Notes:

1) None of these developments are one house developments.

2) The vast majority of the developments named solely in Irish in Cork are in the county. There aren't many in the city and suburbs.

ENDS"

Darren Mac an Phríora
Loiste an Labhrais,
Caisleán Cnucha,
Baile Átha Cliath 15