Conradh na Gaeilge is calling for the setting up without undue delay of an all-Irish university, according to the organisation's president, Mr Tomas Mac Ruairi.
Mr Mac Ruairi, who was speaking in Tralee to delegates at the USI 1998 Irish Language Standing Conference at the weekend, also congratulated the first batch of graduates from the Fiontar programme at Dublin City University, who on Friday received their BSc degrees in finance, computing, enterprise and European languages after a four-year course taught through Irish.
"Every citizen on this island has an inalienable right to education through Irish from the nursery to university but that right is denied to the vast majority at present," Mr Mac Ruairi claimed.
"There is an urgent need for an all-Irish university to serve students from Gaeltacht areas as well as those from the rapidly expanding gaelscoileanna sector and the DCU Fiontar programme indicates such a project is viable."
He said there were "good scientific grounds" to see the growing upsurge in demand for Irish as an important aspect of the so-called Celtic Tiger economic and community dynamism of recent times, because "intellectual freedom is an essential ingredient for any community to achieve its economic, industrial and political potential".
"It has been the essence of Conradh na Gaeilge's core philosophy from the start that a community will blossom best as confident, creative initiators, free to assess, adopt and mould to its own devices all that is best from many cultures, rather than acting as feeble imitators of one imposed culture," he added.