Conchubhar Ó Liatháin, ionadaí áitiúil ó Chúil Aodha i nGaeltacht Mhuscraí, Deirdre Clune TD, Máiréad Ní Chéadagain, ionadaí áitiúil ó Oileán Cléire, Jim O'Keeffe TD, Christy O'Sullivan TD

Fine Gael Cork TD Deirdre Clune has warned that the Gaeltacht experience that thousand of Irish teenagers have each summer may be in danger when cutbacks are announced in the New Year.

This is the time of the year when parents and teenagers start to discuss the possibility of the teenagers spending a few weeks in the Gaeltacht over the summer to improve their conversational Irish. The educational and wider benefits of this experience can be attested to by generations of Irish people who have spent a few weeks in an Irish Gaeltacht at a very formative time in their lives.

The education benefit to the estimated 28,000 teenagers that spend the summer in native Irish speaking areas each year is matched by an economic benefit to the Gaeltacht areas. Many Gaeltacht areas depend on this vital income to help secure their future viability.

This could now be a target for Government cuts in early 2010. The An Bord Snip Report published a few months ago outlined a number of cuts it wished to see implemented in this area including reducing the subvention every Bean an Tí receives for each student they look after.

When I met members of Conaradh na Gaeilge and Guth na Gaeltachta earlier this month they expressed deep concerns about the Bord Snip Report and the impact that Government cuts could have on the Irish language and the viability of Gaeltacht areas.

The 20 year strategy for the Irish language published in November will quickly become a dead letter if the number of young people visiting the Gaeltacht collapses and the income Gaeltacht areas get from this disappears.