OPINION/Lorna SigginsIt is bright, brilliant, refreshingly irreverent, and perhaps it has come just a little bit too late. Even TG4 isn't going to save the Irish language, if the latest health report on same in Gaeltacht areas is anything to go by.Donncha Ó hEallaithe's study for Foinse of fluency levels paints a grim picture; one which, he says, is a damning indictment of the policies of successive administrations.
Usage has already dropped dramatically in four Gaeltacht counties in Ó hEallaithe's analysis of figures compiled by the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs for its Sceim Labhairt na Gaeilge.
After decades of throwing money at the language, it is a wonder it has survived at all. As with the farmers and their subsidies, the "deontas" is clearly not the answer. It isn't the lure of grants - nor even the initial promise of small classes - that has encouraged thousands of parents in urban areas to enrol their children in gaelscoileanna.
Some decades ago, when grants were introduced for new fishing vessels, government policy dictated that there should be extra subsidy for those skippers who spoke Irish. Apparently the concession was opposed unsuccessfully by senior management in Bord Iascaigh Mhara, on the basis that language proficiency did not always make for the most promising skipper. It was argued that any special concessions should be applied to the western region as a whole.
If culture needs its economic base, it should come as no surprise that the fortunes of fishing, small farming and use of Irish should now be taking a dive. Throw in the threats posed to household postal deliveries, the cutbacks proposed for rail freight transport, the impact of an enlarging Europe and a German economy in crisis, and the future of "rural" Ireland certainly looks bleak.
It is at times like this that the work of the Western Development Commission proves its worth. Established after several false starts in 1997 in Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon, with a remit to promote the economic and social development of seven western counties, the commission began publishing several pieces of research, most notably the State of the West in July 2001.
The report called into question the application of the Government's National Development Plan (NDP), the blueprint for EU expenditure which promised an end to regional imbalance.
The report found that almost two years into the plan, the economic gap between the west and the more developed east and south was growing. This was not just a case of inadequate expenditure; the study referred to the need to "decentralise the mindset of government departments" which were increasingly caught up in the problems of overgrowing population in the east.
It also highlighted the dangers of relying on "policies" dictated solely by the marketplace. In a deregulated power and telecommunications market, privatised companies driven by profit margins would not extend infrastructure to less populated areas unless the government intervened.
In other words, even as farmers were leaving the land in droves, and small fishermen were being forced to take greater risks to make ends meet, no viable economic alternative was being offered that would allow people to remain in their native heath.
The Government's inspired response was the €25 million Clár programme, which has been dismissed as inadequate by former Council for the West chairwoman and current Independent TD for Sligo-Leitrim, Ms Marian Harkin. Since then, the commission has published another report on the west's serious disadvantage in terms of telecommunications infrastructure, and it has also criticised delays in investing in the road networks.
FOR its pains, the Western Development Commission risks abolition. Having had its key instrument, the western development fund, cut by over two-thirds in the recent Government Estimates, it has now fallen under the shadow of the "three wise men", the Independent Estimates Review Committee, which was asked to look at ways of making savings ahead of the Budget.
Justification for this was that the commission's work overlapped with and duplicated activities carried out by the community enterprise boards, Udarás na Gaeltachta and Enterprise Ireland. To anyone familiar with the commission's work, and its formation after years of campaigning by western bishops, this is a shockingly narrow and ill-informed judgment.
Yet it is a recommendation that falls very neatly into the Government's lap. The Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Mr Ó Cuiv, says that no decision will be taken on the commission's future until his Department has carried out its own review of the body. He has made no secret of his disdain for its work in the past.
The commission has a staff of 15, and spent €1.4 million in 2002. Ironically, Mr Ó Cuiv's Department is also carrying out a review of Udarás na Gaeltachta. Based in regional offices with a headquarters in the Minister's constituency of Galway West, the authority employs 118 people . It spent €60 million in 2002, some €40 milion from the Exchequer.
Udarás na Gaeltachta sits right beside Roinn na Gaeltachta. If I was one of those three wise men with even half an interest in the future of the west, I know where I'd be tempted to make a bold cut.