Looking back at your own election manifesto, do you feel that this year has been a success?
I think this year has been a success in the fact that I’ve at least made an attempt at everything on my manifesto. I haven’t necessarily achieved everything, but I have definitely tried to achieve the things were on it.
So I think it’s been a success in that regard. And I do think that I’ve definitely seen a lot of interest from people that may not have had a background in Gaeilge before that, who seem to be engaging with the language a little bit as well.
What would you say is the biggest obstacle that you faced this year in your role?
I think the biggest obstacle I faced this year was actually that a lot of people tend to think that as soon as you have a dedicated space to Irish such as Aras na Gaeilge and Caife na Gaeilge, that you don’t really need to encourage it in other places.
So definitely it was kind of widening Irish and taking it outside of just the traditional Irish societies and the Irish locations and really trying to push it into kind of the more niche places. It was definitely a bit of a struggle.
What do you feel was the biggest issue facing students under your mandate?
I think there’s kind of two types of students under my mandate. There’s the Irish speakers and I’d say again kind of going back to that issue of people think that once they have one facility that they’re sorted like they don’t need anything else. So that was definitely an issue that I noticed.
And then there’s the complete opposite side. There’s the students that have never spoken Irish and again it goes back to that whole thing of if you have one completely Irish speaking facility, if there’s a student that can only say Dia dhuit, they’re not going to engage with that because they’re gonna feel out of their depth. So definitely, I think it was kind of going back to that whole widening thing and making it more accessible across campus.
What is your proudest achievement that you will take away from your term?
I think my proudest achievement is actually the award I set up, so I set up the Gradam Gaelach, which is an award for societies that want to get more involved with using Irish. For example one of the societies we have involved is Post Grad Soc and they wouldn’t have like a big Irish speaking cohort, but they’ve made the effort to include a little bit of Irish .
So I think that’s definitely like my proudest thing today is being able to encourage Irish in a more untraditional way.
Finally, what is one piece of advice that you would give to the person going into your role next year?
A piece of advice I would give to the person in my role next year is that people tend to think because there’s a Leas-Uachtarán don Ghaeilge, they don’t need to engage with the Irish language and you do honestly just need to be annoying and like I know no one wants to be annoying and no one wants to think that people think they’re annoying. But it’s the truth, you just have to keep pushing and you’re going to get knocked down and you just need to get up again and brush yourself off and keep going.
