Kinsale Cultural and Heritage Society hosted 4th class students at the town’s Library to mark Seachtain na Gaeilge as Seanchaí, Paddy O’Brien, entertained the gathering.
The second year the local history society organised the event, it has proven to be very popular with the students from Summercove NS, Scoil Naomh Eltin, Dunderrow NS, St Multose and Gaelscoil Chionn tSaile, particularly with the no homework for that evening, as a result of their participation.
In addition to Paddy’s outstanding performance, which is full of energy as he ensures the students are engaged over the two hourly sessions, it also allows the children to show their own talents, through the medium of the Irish language.
This year, St Multose put on a very different version of the Hakka through the medium of Irish, for the other schools there were several versions of some well-known tunes ‘As Gaeilge’.
For Paddy O’Brien, who is a retired national school teacher himself, he praised the pupils and the teachers for not just the fluency of the pupils’ Irish but also for their familiarity with the stories associated with Irish Culture.
The society is also delighted to secure the support of the First South Credit Union (FSCU), who again sponsored a fifty-euro voucher for each school to purchase books in Irish for their individual libraries.
Following the presentations, The Youth and Marketing Officer from FSCU, Georgie Cantwell said,’ The credit union was absolutely delighted to sponsor the event again this year, encouraging the language is really important and bringing it to a public space such as the library shows it just doesn’t exist in the classroom.’
For chairman of Kinsale Cultural and Heritage Society, JJ Hurley, promoting the language is very much part of the society’s brief.
‘The Irish language and culture is something we in the society are very conscious about,’ JJ said.
‘We do our best to promote the subject as part of our brief, like many my Gaeilge has faded somewhat since I left secondary school but using the odd couple of focal is important to keeping the language alive’
He certainly believes the community can do more.
‘I know I joined a conversational class last year, but busy schedules has seen me drift away, but we all could do better, as my teachers often said back in the day,’ JJ remarked.
‘Obviously our day was a huge success and in addition to thanking the school’s, pupils and teachers, there is a big shout-out to the library staff, of course, Paddy, but not forgetting our friends at the Credit Union in the town.’
