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DoChara's Ireland Blog
Random Writings about Ireland and the Irish
Tuesday
July 19 2005
Dingle Dilemma
The story of the 'abolition' of Dingle goes on. You may be aware that, officially, Dingle no longer exists. Many of it's citizens are less than impressed by the change in their address to An Daingean and want Dingle back.
They are now to have a vote on the issue, though whether it will have any legal clout is open to debate. The Minister in charge of the debacle, Eamon Ó Cuiv says he doesn't care and that they can call it Beverly Hills if they like, but I am not so sure he means that. If he did would he have felt it necessary to add that "the reintroduction of "Dingle" could have implications for funding under future reviews of Gaeltacht boundaries."?
I am assuming he is not thinking that a massive increase in funding would be in order to reward the good people of Dingle for embracing local democracy. There are considerable financial beneifits in the form of grants and concessions to living in the Gealtacht - Irish speaking areas of Ireland.
But it seems that in order to qualify you must do more than just speak Irish, you must also give up any sense of ownership of the place you call, well, whatever they tell you to call it. But then we live in a funny country, one where a prime minister can appoint his ex-girlfriend to a state board and pooh-pooh anyone who questions the impartiality of that decision.
Irish politics reminds me of Irish weather. There are occasional periods of brightness and clarity when it seems that this is the perfect place to live and there is nowhere in the world quite as good as it. Then the clouds roll in, it gets dark, overcast and threatening again; normal service has resumed.
Comments on "Dingle Dilemma"
19 July 2005
The bright spells being just a lot of hot air :)
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