OF THE €95m spent by public bodies on advertising in 2024, almost €19m was spent on Irish language advertising in the media, it has been disclosed in a report issued by the Office of the Coimisinéir TeangaLanguage Commissioner today.

This included €13.5m spent on Irish language advertising in the English language media, an increase of €3.3m or 34% on the amount spent in 2023, and €5.2m spent on Irish language advertising in the Irish language media. This was a 37% increase on expenditure of €3.8m in 2023.

A total of 397 organisations classified as public bodies spent €94.4m on advertising during 2024.

Public bodies are legally required to advertise a proportion of their advertising in Irish each year. According to Section 10(A) of the Official Languages ​​Act 2003 (as amended in 2021), public bodies are required to spend 20% of their annual budget on advertising in Irish language media and 5% on advertising in Irish language media.

According to Séamus Ó Concheannainn, An Coimisinéir Teanga, the 397 organisations that are considered public bodies under the legislation have succeeded in achieving this threshold on average.

Ó Coincheanainn described as “encouraging evidence in the reinforcement of the rights of the Irish language community”  the increase of almost €5m in expenditure on advertising in Irish in 2024, compared to 2023”.

“The increase in the presence and visibility of the Irish language on new traditional and digital media is a promising sign for the strengthening of the Irish language nationally.”

“The growth in the Irish language media and the additional revenue streams created by the legislation are welcome.”

The Office of An Coimisinéir Teanga said in its statement that it was “continuing to audit public bodies to ensure that each individual public body complies with the provision regarding advertising in Irish”.

According to the manager of Dublin based Raidió na Life, Muiris Ó Fiannachta, the provisions regarding public advertising have “changed things completely” for the Irish langauge station.

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“It was towards the end of 2022 that we started to see these major changes because advertising agencies were contacting us wanting to advertise in Irish with us, groups we had never heard from before,”  he said while being interviewed recently on RTÉ RnaG’s Tús Áite show.

We are now approaching the third year that Raidió na Life has been dealing with this funding and last year we received approximately €300,000.

Last year was the first time the station received advertising income in excess of the annual funding of €280,000 that it receives from Foras na Gaeilge.

The Journal’s Gaeltacht initiative is supported by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme