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happyDUBLIN, Ireland (AP) - The European Union is granting official status to Gaelic, Ireland announced Monday, in a move that will make the little-used native Irish tongue the 21st official language in the EU.
SHAWN POGATCHNIK "It's a real psychological boost for the Irish language," Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern said in a telephone interview from an EU meeting in Luxembourg. He estimated that the move would create about 30 jobs for Gaelic speakers in the EU bureaucracy.
Ahern said the move would go into effect Jan. 1, 2007, after which any Irish representative will be free to speak Gaelic, rather than the universally spoken English, at EU ministerial meetings or in the European Parliament.
All EU legislation will be translated into Gaelic, while live translations in Gaelic would be provided at EU meetings if the Irish speaker requested it in advance.
Ireland had been campaigning for official EU recognition of Gaelic since the first half of 2004, when Ireland held the rotating presidency of the bloc at a moment when it was expanding from 15 to 25 members - and introducing new languages ranging from Polish to Maltese.
The promotion of Gaelic is widely viewed as a political sacred cow in Ireland, where elected representatives and officials - like the population at large - almost exclusively use English. In Ireland's own parliament, less than two per cent of business is conducted in Gaelic.
But Ahern said gaining EU recognition of Gaelic, besides creating jobs for Gaelic speakers, would boost pride and interest in what remains the Irish state's official language.
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