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The Irish language has scored cultural breakthroughs with the film The Quiet Girl and the controversial rap trio Kneecap and is now about to acquire a new talisman: Catherine Connolly.
When the independent leftwing politician is inaugurated as Ireland’s president on Tuesday, she will carry hopes of a transformational Gaelic revival.
The former barrister from Galway made Gaelic a central part of her election campaign and has indicated she wishes to make it the working language of the presidency. “I will do my best to bring Irish in from the margins and use it,” Connolly told the Irish language station Raidió na Gaeltachta.
The 68-year-old shocked the centre-right political establishment last month when she won a landslide in the election to succeed Michael D Higgins as Ireland’s 10th president. Her candidacy united opposition leftwing parties, energised young voters and won 64% of the vote.
The inability of her centrist rival Heather Humphreys to speak Irish, in contrast to Connolly’s fluency, bolstered the latter’s appeal. The presidency is a largely symbolic post but Connolly is expected to use it as a platform for social and international issues and the promotion of Irish.
“She has brought the language to the centre of national debate,” said Conchúr Ó Muadaigh, a spokesperson for the advocacy group Conradh na Gaeilge. “She doesn’t treat it as a cultural afterthought or decoration. It’s something she genuinely believes in. It’s part of her solidarity with indigenous struggles against decolonisation.”
The Irish language, once the majority of Ireland’s native tongue, withered under British rule in the 19th century. Decline continued after independence despite the constitution proclaiming Irish as the first official language.
Less than 2% of the population converse in Irish daily, according to census figures, although roughly 40% say they can speak the language. Exemptions from the compulsory study of Irish at school are at record level and critics say government plans to improve its teaching lack ambition.
However, revival efforts have widened its use from rural western areas to towns and cities. The number of schools teaching all subjects exclusively in Irish has multiplied from fewer than 20 in the 1970s to more than 200 today, fuelling curiosity and appreciation for content in the language.
The Quiet Girl, known in Irish as An Cailín Ciúin, became a standard bearer after breaking box office records in Ireland and the UK in 2022.
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The group Kneecap has coined new usages and given the language a punk cachet. Irish language and bilingual podcasts such as Motherfoclóir and How To Gael have proliferated, as have Gaeilgeoir TikTok creators such as the comedian and writer Eoin P Ó Murchú. The platform has 54,600 posts in Irish, a 71% growth in a year, the company said.
Kara Owen, the new British ambassador to Ireland, introduced herself to the Irish people last month with a bilingual video that won widespread praise. “It’s a beautiful language and it’s helped me understand so much about Irish culture and even Hiberno-English,” she told the news site the Journal.
Connolly’s presidency comes amid the language’s growing reach in Northern Ireland, which has become a proxy political battle between nationalists and unionists. Under the terms of a landmark 2022 law, Stormont recently appointed the region’s first Irish language commissioner.
Activists hope Connolly’s seven-year term in Áras an Uachtaráin, the presidential residence, will be a watershed. “Despite the limitations of the post there is genuine reason to think her presidency could be a transformative moment for Irish language in public life,” said Ó Muadaigh, who is also a spokesperson for An Dream Dearg, a Northern Ireland-based campaign group. “She has the ability to show that the state can function at its highest level through Irish.”
