Meeting of the Parliament 24 April 2018
When I meet constituents across the Highlands and Islands, there are signs of Gaelic everywhere that I travel on our roads, in our stations and by our lochs and Munros. They are a daily reminder of how important Gaelic is to Scotland.
I struggled to listen to Kate Forbes and the interpretation at the same time. Frankly, both were worth listening to, so I will go back and listen to one and then the other so that I can link them together.
Gaelic has a fundamental place in Scotland’s cultural heritage, with the clans that we associate with and the ceilidhs that we dance at all having traditions that date back. It is right to remember Scotland’s Gaelic past, but it would be wrong to think of the language as an historical language, because it is very much a living language—albeit that it is one that has been threatened and which we must remember to cherish.
With the future of Gaelic being far from secure, it is encouraging to see that, for the first time, there has been an increase in the number of Gaelic speakers under the age of 25. However, the overall picture is one of decline. The 2011 census recorded that there were about 58,000 Gaelic speakers, which represented a fall of about 1,000 on the figure from 10 years previously.
Therefore, the Scottish Government’s new Gaelic language plan could not have come at a more opportune time to reassure communities on how Parliament proposes to support them. It is worth bearing it in mind that 50 per cent of Gaelic speakers live in the Highlands and Islands. The Government’s plan is nationwide in scale, but it must be particularly sensitive to the needs of local and rural communities in the region that I represent.
The issues that impact on those rural communities—lack of jobs, housing, broadband and public transport—all impact Gaelic communities and the Gaelic language, which often results in depopulation that decreases use of the language, which we should be striving to protect. The pressure is therefore on the Government to unlock the potential economic value that Gaelic can provide to the Scottish economy, which could, according to Highlands and Islands Enterprise, be in the region of £100 million per annum. The growth of the rural economy will lead to the growth of Gaelic in Scotland, which is something that we should all work towards.
Economic gains from Gaelic will be underpinned by effective Gaelic education. In recent years, Gaelic has become an essential part of Highlands school life, with 23 primary schools and 16 secondary schools teaching the language. Inverness boasts the first purpose-built Gaelic-medium primary school, which was opened in 2007 with 100 pupils and has, 10 years later, a roll of 232 pupils. That is a success story that we should all celebrate.
It is clear that more and more communities that have a Gaelic tradition want their children to be more than bilingual, because the benefits from being so are beyond doubt. Learning different languages from an early age leads to higher attainment, so we should not be surprised that more parents wish to send their children to Gaelic-medium schools. The Scottish Conservatives will always support investment in Gaelic schools where there is a real demand from the parents in a community that has a Gaelic tradition.