24 hours in . . .An Ghaeltacht

The modern-day Gaeltacht is a far cry from horror stories of bad food, tales of lonely students and fear of a language taught by rote – but one full sentence in English and you’re out

ONE OF THE unwavering constants in Irish life, admissions to Irish college in Gaeltacht areas have taken a hit over the past few years as parents struggle to come up with fees. But for thousands of secondary-school students, those few summer weeks in the Gaeltacht haven’t really changed in decades. Language immersion, romance, céilís, making friends and having the edge when exam time comes are what continue to draw teenagers to the west of Ireland and elsewhere year in year out.

As Connemara scenes go, you can’t rival a straw-laden donkey making its way up the road past Coláiste Uí Chadhain, trailed by a group of students emerging from morning lessons. Along the road between Spiddal and TG4, this Gaeltacht college is two courses into its summer, with 90 students in an old school building that was closed down in the 1970s and is leased every summer from the parish council. In an idyllic setting, with the type of landscape American tourists coo over and small lanes leading down to unspoiled, empty beaches, the pint-pulling raucousness of Galway city feels further than 20 miles.

MORNING

“I always say, ‘don’t start crying or I’ll start crying’.” Even though their stay is temporary, Róisín Ní Chonfhaola gets attached to the students. She’s been a bean an tí for five years. Before that, she was a teacher in Coláiste Uí Chadhain, but decided to become a bean an tí to stay home with her children. Ní Chonfhaola gets up at 7am to prepare for a day of feeding and watering the 14 girls under her roof. (Fourteen has become the magic number for mná tí. Recent cuts mean that the previous subvention, for up to 16 students per house, has been reduced by two.) She gets their breakfast ready and then bakes brown bread. Then she prepares the vegetables for dinner, serves breakfast, and cleans the diningroom, kitchen and bathroom. Bedroom cleaning is left to the students. They go off for their lessons after breakfast and come back at 1pm for the main meal of the day.

At dinnertime, mid-afternoon, her large kitchen is abuzz with students moving on to desserts. Ní Chonfhaola’s desserts are famous throughout Coláiste Uí Chadhain. She has 21 different dessert recipes, one for every day of the three-week course. On the window sill is a collection of thank-you cards from parents, one remarking on her cooking being “much better” than the mother who sent it.

There’s a sense that Ní Chonfhaola puts an extra effort into what she’s providing for the students, far from Gaeltacht-of-yore cuisine horror stories. “It’s hard to get that money together for the parents,” she says. “They’re sending their kids to some place, and they don’t know who they’re going to for three weeks. I used to see parents when I was teaching dropping them off, and they would be worried. I always thought, you know, if they could go somewhere and then just phone the parents and say ‘the bean an tí is so nice and the food is great’, parents feel like they’ve done the right thing for their kids.”

Most of the changes Ní Chonfhaola has seen in the past five years – aside from “more fake tan and more dry shampoo” are monetary. “When I started there was more money in the country. They have less pocket money, but that’s a good thing, they’d only be spending it on sweets and things they don’t need.”

Jennifer Foy (17), from Lucan, one of Ní Chonfhaola’s brood, is spending her fourth summer at the college. “You meet new friends and everyone is very close,” she says in Irish, in the small, one-room building next to the school that functions as a staff room, office and stationary depot. “The teachers and students are friends. No one speaks Irish in Dublin, so this is a chance to do that.”

Ryan Henehan (17), from Loughrea, agrees. “The classes are completely different to school because everyone is involved,” he says in Irish. “The oral test for the Leaving Cert is 40 per cent now. Here, you’re always learning new words. Someone might say ‘give me that thing’, and you can tell them the word they’re looking for, so we learn from each other.”

Both Foy and Henehan are keen to return to the college as assistants, and they both also want to study Irish in university. “I’d like to be an Irish teacher, “ says Henehan. “Before I came to the Gaeltacht I had no interest in Irish, but now I love it. I love learning about Irish history and culture.”

Jean McDonnell, 16, from Maynooth, is also aware of the employment opportunities being a fluent Irish speaker offers. “It’s easier to get a job in a Gaelscoil if you have Irish – that’s what I’ve been thinking of . . . We definitely have an advantage going back to school. It’s the spoken Irish that we’ll have. Having a bigger vocabulary is good for the oral test because we have new words for things and new ways of saying them,” she says.

Their enthusiasm for the language feels at odds with how Leaving Cert students outside of Gaeltacht areas talk about Irish during the exam year, dismissing its value and questioning the coursework, and how, historically, generation after generation of Irish school-leavers berates the way the language is taught. It’s something the teachers at Coláiste Uí Chadhain are only too aware of. It begs the question: if the Gaeltacht summer school experiment has been so successful at teaching young people Irish for decades, why do none of its teachings bleed back into course work?

“Absolutely,” says Aoife Ní Raincín, a teacher from Galway city, after the morning lessons have ended. “The education system we have now is all based on rote learning. There’s not enough conversation. What we do here is invaluable for all kids, and they should be doing what we do here in secondary schools. They benefit so much from it. When the class is interactive, it’s more effective. It’s also good for their communication skills.”

Her colleague, Darragh MacUnfraidh from Balbriggan, says the intensity of the immersion adds a huge amount to students’ learning. “I suppose one thing that really struck me was one day an inspector came and he just wanted to speak to the kids after they were finished their day’s work here. And he was saying that they were doing four, 40-minute classes a day, six times a week, so by the time he worked it out over the weeks and the intensity of it, it was more or less the same as an extra school year of Irish. So that became apparent to me how effective it can be for anyone who’s engaging with it.”

Back in the teacher’s house a few minutes’ drive from the college, they’re assembling a lunch of ham and cheese sandwiches for themselves. Eoin Ó Riain, originally from Athlone and a secondary-school teacher in Bray, says: “The kids want to be here, which would be different to a normal Irish class.”

“There’s nothing strenuous about it when you compare it to school,” says Ní Raincín. “It’s what we love to do, trying to keep the Irish alive,” says Aisling Ní Chormaic, from Carraroe. “You see the progress at the end of the course as well, you see how they’ve come on, so that’s a huge factor for me as well, because you know you’re doing your job.”

AFTERNOON

Peigín Uí Mharta is taking a break from the 14 boys staying under her roof almost next door to the coláiste. Some are sitting on a wall outside, working out chords on a guitar. Another is pucking a sliotar off the house wall. The rest must be inside, but you wouldn’t know it from how quiet they are. In her kitchen, she’s getting ready to see them off for the sports and games part of their day. “I’ve been doing this for 25 years now, it’s probably time for me to retire,” she says in Irish. Uí Mharta started with girls, but now prefers boys. “They’re more confident these days but they’re still nice. I’ve never thrown anyone out of the house. If you’re nice and respectful, they’re nice and respectful to you.”

She runs through the meals they enjoy – spaghetti Bolognese, chicken curry, sweet and sour, burgers and chips. “I’ll keep doing this for as long as my two feet keep moving. As long as they’ll come, I’ll keep them in my house.”

Irish college is, of course, bigger than the students, the teachers and the bean an tís. It provides a vital source of income to the local economy. Uí Mharta is also acutely aware of the benefits Coláiste Uí Chadhain and its ilk bring to an area that is otherwise underemployed. “It’s absolutely brilliant for here. This year, there wouldn’t be anything here if they weren’t here. The amount of jobs they make; buses, teachers and everything like that. I was talking to a lad there, a bus driver, and he was giving out about it starting again. I said ‘if it wasn’t for them you’d having nothing to do’. He said, ‘you’re right there’. It’s not just about people in one house, it’s good for Connemara; shops, hotels, restaurants and cafes.”

The afternoon is dedicated to sports and activities. For some of the students, it’s sea-kayaking time. The paddles are removed from the corner of the school’s entrance, brushing past posters that declare “tús maith, leath na hoibre”, and they stroll down to the beach where the sky opens up and the Aran Islands push through the haze in the distance. On a fine day, they’ll stay on the beach all afternoon, or head out to one of the islands.

Coláiste Uí Chadhain’s youthful principal is Seán Mac Enrí. Born and raised in the area, his family has been rooted in Connemara for generations. Mac Enrí started working at the coláiste when he was 17, as a teacher’s assistant. That was 17 years ago. He went on to teach here and then became principal, running summer courses for the past decade.

Proud of the pedigree of the college, he’s pragmatic and quite serious, and fully committed to the students’ learning over three weeks. You get the sense that he could hear an English word uttered at 50 paces. One full sentence of English spoken and a student’s parent is called to say it isn’t working out. But his authority is matched with an affection for the students, verbally sparring with their mild back chat, bringing up GAA rivalries, turning a blind eye to a cheeky snog. “They love it here, they really do,” he says, boiling a kettle in the small one-room staff building. “But it’s due to themselves, it’s not that we do anything magical. They create their own fun, their own atmosphere.”

Mac Enrí briefly worked in another Irish college and didn’t enjoy it due to its size (it had around 250 students). “The kids have a great spirit and a great attitude. They’re great to be around to be honest. When you’ve kids coming back year after year, as soon as they step off the bus, you know them already. It’s great to see the same faces coming back. I enjoy it – that’s why I do it.”

The money is “handy” too, although Mac Enrí admits that if it was just for financial gain, he wouldn’t be doing it, preferring to have the summer off, for his two other favourite pursuits, fishing and sailing. “I know for the kids themselves it’s because they really enjoy their time here. They enjoy each other’s company, they enjoy the craic they generate themselves. Of course there’s the romance side of things, it’s a chance to meet boys, it’s a chance to meet girls. Some of them do have a genuine interest in Irish, and that’s why we’ve had former students come back and now working as teachers.” Their parents have a say, naturally. Some, Mac Enrí says, want the best for their kids, others want to pack them off for three weeks but, whatever the motivations, “the total immersion for three weeks does work miracles. I’ve seen new kids arrive on the first day and they couldn’t even put one sentence together and after a week they’re going around talking no problem.”

EVENING

Just after 8pm, the strains of a reel for the Walls of Limerick ring out across nearby fields. The windows are open, offering some respite from teenage sweat. The evening sun is bouncing off the sea and there’s a mist of burning turf in the air. The students stand up, and the basic hall, with wooden floorboards and hand-drawn posters, becomes a spinning blur of rudimentary Irish dancing, Converse and Topshop shorts. “Damhsa nua!” the call goes up from Mac Enrí, who walks them through the steps, which they grasp quickly, inserting their own whoops in time with the music. Harmless flirtations skirt in and around handclaps and turns, and the end of each dance is greeted with wholesome but rapturous applause. Every time “rogha na cailíní” (the girl’s choice of partner) is called before a dance, the cheers are extra loud, and very female.

The underlying purpose of the céilí is to tire them out, and the energy bar is raised when a modern song blares out through the PA, which sees two young men doing “the worm” from one end of the hall to the other, and an extra vigorous céilí conga. They call for an encore and they get it before the break.

Outside, still bright, a young man sings “táimid ag dul shift-áil” to the tune of The Lion Sleeps Tonight and a few couples are conspicuously missing from the volleyball court. They eventually emerge from the back of the school building, “Where. Were. You. Two?,” one friend queries dramatically as Gaeilge, as a particularly sheepish looking couple reappear. “Eh, you were there too!” the young man protests – as Gaeilge again, naturally.