Plé:Brenda Power

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ón gceann Béarla: le haistriú, seans, Views on the native tongue of Ireland - Irish

She is against the Irish language being a compulsory subject in Irish schools, this is despite the fact that international research in the field of linguistics suggests that the Irish language may die out if linguistic supports such as this are lost. Her justification of dropping the Irish language as a compulsory subject was along the following lines; In a live TV debate on the RTE TV show "Prime Time" on 12th March 2013 Power stated her belief that a harmless old woman from the Blasket Islands e.g. "Peig Sayers", famous at the turn of the 20th century for her story telling has done more damage to the Irish language than Oliver Cromwell, an English general who conducted a brutal military and possibly genocidal campaign in Ireland circa 1649-1650. Also, anecdotal evidence that in one specific event an Irish policeman could not understand a simple phrase of the Irish language. In her mind this was all the evidence required to show that the compulsory teaching system of Irish language in schools is futile (Apparently the thought did not occur to her that this maybe was more of a reflection of the academic abilitiy or an issue with the entry requirements of the Irish police force). Her bizarre powers of reasoning as exampled above is typical of the media "career" she has carved out for herself, known in Ireland as a "shock jock" of sorts, a female Kevin Myers if you will, a conservative who leaps into contentious debates with an ignorant, facetious style of debating that ignores facts, statistics and basic common sense (most famously against the gay community). It seems that Ms. Power adheres to the belief that there is "no such thing as bad publicity". [edit]References