MEITS Blog

June's parliamentary elections in France were a great success for the burgeoning centrist movement founded by Emmanuel Macron with his year-old party La République en marche (LREM) securing 308 seats in the National Assembly, an outright majority in the lower house.

Irish was a principal background factor in the breakdown of the Northern Ireland executive in January, resulting in a snap election on Thursday, 2 March. The position of the Irish language in Northern Ireland became a key issue in the election campaign among politicians and constituents alike. Parties clashed over the need to introduce an Irish Language Act, with some major parties vehemently opposed to any concessions towards the language.

A week ago (on 31 October), the Irish-language channel, TG4, celebrated its first twenty years in existence; its advent had been greeted with scepticism by many and the cost of establishing and running the station had been resented by some. While Irish as the ‘national language’ has the status of first official language in the Irish Republic (English being the second), Irish speakers are in a minority; of a total population of around 4.5 million people, some 1.77 million answered ‘yes’ to the question ‘Can you speak Irish’ in the 2011 Census. However, as few as 1% of the population may be habitual speakers of the language, i.e. those for whom Irish is the main home, work and/or community language.