Duncan Ferguson - President of the Scottisch Gaelic Development Agency
"All the institutions will have to take measures in favour of Gaelic"
Duncan Ferguson is the president of the Scottish Bord na Gaidhlig (BnaG) or Gaelic Development Agency. The Executive in Edinburgh has decided to put forward a bill to support Gaelic and has therefore asked the Gaelic Development Agency to set up a national plan. Ferguson talked to us about the steps taken up to now in favour of Gaelic and about the possible effects of the bill.
When did the Scottish Executive decide to put forward a bill to support Gaelic?
It was towards the end of the Scottish Parliament's first legislature [the Scottish Parliament was constituted in 1999]. In March this year a Scottish National Party MSP made the first proposal. He did not manage to get it passed but the Scottish Executive did agree to work on a law to save and develop the Gaelic culture and language. It has been a rather long debate. There were a number of attempts to make a law for Gaelic at Westminster too, but they did not go ahead. In the mid-nineties the Gaelic support organisations made a proposal intending it to be assessed in parliament. However, the Executive made a commitment of this kind for the first time in April and the Unit to work on the bill was set up in October. Our Agency has organised 14 public meetings for Scottish citizens to take part.
Is this decision by the Executive a consequence of the SNP proposal to make Gaelic official in certain areas?
I think it has more to do with the organisations that have been working for Gaelic for a long time. Although there have been steps forward in the field of education -2000 children have been taught in Gaelic in kindergarten and primary school-, although there have been steps forward in TV –programmes in Gaelic have been created in the BBC and ITV thanks to a £9 million grant-, although there have been many developments in the field of art, there is no national law, no national organisation to assess the situation of Gaelic. Therefore, a year ago an advisory Ministerial Advisory Group recommended the creation of a commission or agency to fulfil those objectives. That Agency is the Bord na Gaidhlig. I was appointed a year ago and the other members have started working this year. Our office is in Inverness, we are a small group and we have only recently all started working as a complete team. We evaluate the budgets of all the organisations in favour of Gaelic and we advise the Ministers on Gaelic.
Has advising been your main line of work up to now?
The Agency's task has been to assess the work of all the organisations working for Gaelic and controlling the grants the Executive gives them. The second main objective is to advise the Minister for Gaelic and Education and the third aim is to create a national plan for Gaelic. This plan will include all fields of action: education, social and economic development, culture and art. The national plan will be our main task and the objective of the plan is to develop Gaelic, of course.
What steps have you taken up to now?
We are evaluating our priorities to distribute the money we have. In education, for instance, taking on teachers for older students; in the field of art, creating opportunities for theatre companies to use both languages… This is because the latest surveys show that fewer than 60,000 citizens speak Gaelic fluently in the whole country. This is very worrying, even though over 100,000 people have a fairly good level of Gaelic. Added to this, outside our country, we find there are half a million people who have some knowledge of Gaelic. The reason is that many Scots emigrated to the USA, Canada and many other places. One of our plans is to look into what you, the Basques, the Catalans, the Bretons, the Welsh and the Irish, have done to promote your languages. One of the main responsibilities of the Agency will be to provide all the public authorities with a language plan, which will allow citizens to use Gaelic in their relations with the public institutions.
What is the main difference between the SNP proposal and your one?
The main difference is that our plan is for the whole of Scotland. When that initiative was presented the idea was only to implement it in certain parts of Scotland. The bill will be directed at the whole of Scotland.
Will the bill give Gaelic official status?
That is still being debated. The Executive says it will be made an official language, but the bill does not specifically state this point. I think the main points for debate will be the right to use Gaelic in court and the right to be taught in Gaelic at school. This bill will give Gaelic a level of official recognition it has never had before. Sometimes the institutions will not be able to provide this service, but we believe a lot can be done with appropriate translation services and with currently existing information technology.
Do you think measures will be put in place for all public services to use Gaelic in their everyday work?
I hope so. A company that makes maps of the UK and Scotland has already begun using the Gaelic names. The Scottish Art Council has also taken measures in favour of Gaelic… We hope many other organisations and institutions will do the same thing. When the bill becomes law, they will have to do it; the Agency will ask them to do so, and they will have to have very good reasons to avoid doing it, as the Minister for Gaelic said.
Ainara Mendiola
19.07.2004
