By Cillian Doyle.
The public sector should provide refresher courses in Irish to its staff.
That's the view of one Waterford researcher, who is appealing to the public, not to neglect their nation's tongue.
The researcher also says bad school experiences means we're underplaying our Irish abilities.
Shane Barry, an Applied Linguistic doctoral student at Mary Immaculate College.
He says people need to forget the negative connotations from school, and have more faith in their Irish abilities:
'If you had a bad result in an Irish exam there was generally no constructive feedback on how to improve.'
'Some people referred to the corporal punishment that existed in school years ago by saying your feedback was a slap if you got it wrong.'
'When you compare that then to other languages like German, French or Spanish, a lot of the participants talked about how they felt there was a lot of reinforcement, positive attitudes from teachers on how to use the language.'
Barry says only 2% of the 21,000 public sector staff he surveyed, said they were capable of interacting with the public through Irish when required.
The Waterford native says our education has to take a lot of the responsibility:
'Do not be so dismissive of your Irish language ability and out right declaring that you can't speak a language.'
'You have 2,000 hours of tuition behind you, the majority of the cases is the language is lying dormant and just waiting to be reactivated.'
