Whatever else Brian Cowen does as Taoiseach, he has already done the State some service by prioritising the Irish language, writes ANTHONY MUNNELLY.
BRIAN COWEN will be appointed this morning as the 11th leader of an independent Ireland. The country he takes over is on the ebb tide of an economic boom, and is in need of expert piloting. But whatever else may befall the new Taoiseach, he has already done the State some service.
In prioritising the Irish language, Cowen has already shrugged off the nasty smell of greed that so clings to our understanding of the Celtic Tiger era, and has shown that maybe there's more to being Irish than making quick killings on two-bedroom apartments in the commuter belt.
The ability to speak the first language is not something that the nation finds particularly attractive in aspirant taoisigh.
Enda Kenny's loquacity in the first language during a television debate with Bertie Ahern last year was perhaps somewhat undone by his struggles with economic issues discussed through the medium of the second language.
Ahern's own Irish is not strong; watching him run through the cúpla focal during his ardfheis speeches was like watching a child gritting his teeth and making the best of it during preparations for the Leaving Cert oral exams, ordinary level syllabus.
The fact that Ahern served as minister for the Gaeltacht for the final month of the Reynolds' government is eloquent enough testimony to the priority that that office has received down the years.
Cowen will be only the third Irish prime minister with some reasonable ability to speak extempore in his native tongue. His predecessors in this regard were also Fianna Fáil taoisigh, Jack Lynch and Éamon de Valera.
De Valera always loved the language; Michael O'Hehir records in his autobiography how de Valera spoke in Irish while visiting O'Hehir in the Mater in 1968, while Jack Lynch was - briefly - minister for the Gaeltacht in 1957 and retained sufficient Irish to speak it with Liam Ó Murchú on Trom Agus Eadrom20 years later.
Charles Haughey succeeded in giving the impression that he spoke fluent Irish - his remarks on the semantics of Doire v Londonderry in the television show Charlie Haughey's Irelandspring instantly to mind - and he was minister for the Gaeltacht as well as Taoiseach from 1987 to 1992. However, like so many things concerning Haughey, the truth, while out there, remains difficult to pin down.
The Cumann na nGaedhael/Fine Gael side is less well served by their presidents of the executive council or taoisigh.
However, two of the more remarkable students of Irish have been Fine Gael members, and came from quite disparate backgrounds.
Ernest Blythe has gone down in history as the man who took the shilling off the old age pension in the 1920s, but as a student of Irish his is a remarkable story. Born the son of a Protestant farmer in Lisburn in 1889, Blythe joined the Gaelic League and by 1913 the fire was sufficiently lit in him for Blythe to work for two years as a farm labourer in Kerry from 1913 to 1915 in order to improve his Irish.
He published two volumes of autobiography in Irish and is the man who founded An Gúm in 1926, the official Irish language publisher of the State. An Gúm has seen better days but the very fact it exists in the first place is testimony to the idealism on which the State was founded.
Pat Lindsay was from the Mayo Gaeltacht, and had a stronger sense of realism when it came to reviving the language. Lindsay is the man who, when driving to the Park with John A Costello and James Dillon to return their seals of ministerial office after the fall of the Inter-Party Government in 1957, had an insight into why that government fell.
Lindsay wryly notes in his autobiographical volume Memoriesthat when Dillon told him he had never been in a pub of his own volition and Costello said he had visited one only once, Lindsay realised that the government was hopelessly out of touch with the tastes and interests of the citizenry.
Lindsay was the first ever secretary for the Gaeltacht when that department was established in October 1956, but he quickly realised that tokenism was already a deeply-established part of the culture. In Memories Lindsay writes of a visit to a Gaeltacht village in Donegal with the then minister of education Richard Mulcahy. While the children chanted the customary Fáilte Romhat a Áirefor their guest, they spoke only English among themselves. The only interesting part of the day for the then minister for the Gaeltacht was "meeting a priest who was interested in a few half-ones".
The Irish language has never been a political priority. But the three major party leaders in the Dáil all have fluent Irish now, and Cowen has gone on the record more than once concerning the language's importance to him and to the country.
Maybe, even if the larder is indeed bare and the fiscal outlook fraught, it will be some consolation to the new Taoiseach that he can still make the first language a priority as talk is blissfully cheap.
Go n-éirí an bóthar leis.
Anthony Munnelly is an Irish language enthusiast and writes blogs as An Spailpín Fánach.