(Foireann Gaeltachta The Journal a chuir an scéal seo ar fáil. Tá leagan as Gaeilge anseo.) 

THE PRESIDENT OF Ireland should have Irish because it is the country’s first official language by law and he – or she – is the country’s ‘first citizen’, an expert on constitutional law has argued in an interview with The Journal.

According to Dr Seán Ó Conaill, a senior lecturer in the subject at University College Cork, although Irish is not mentioned as a necessary qualification for the Presidency in the Constitution, that original legal document was drafted at a time when there had been controversies on this issue.

Domhnal Ua Buachalla, the last Governor General of the Free State before the decision to have a President, spoke Irish, and made a big deal of it. Éamon De Valera, the Taoiseach at the time, understood the importance of the President speaking Irish but, nevertheless, it was not mentioned in the Constitution as a necessary qualification.

But he chose Douglas Hyde a renowned Irish poet and scholar, founder of the Gaelic League and a Protestant, to be his first President to give a strong signal of the kind of President he would be.

Ó Conaill said that the President had a Constitutional role which meant that it was important, from a legal perspective, that he or she had an understanding of the Irish language.

“The Constitution is available in Irish and English but if there is a conflict between the English text and the Irish text, the Irish text takes precedence.

“Therefore, given the constitutional role of the President, it is very important that the President understands what is in the Irish text as well as the English text.

“They may not need to be familiar with Irish to understand that, but they would have to be willing to ask someone who spoke Irish what this means and whether there is a difference between this and what is in the English text.”

“Therefore we think that the President should have a certain level of Irish, it is important from a legal point of view and from a point of view of what is in the Constitution.”

Ó Conaill gave an example of a significant difference between the English text of the Constitution and the original Irish version which concerned the age that the President should have attained before being elected.

According to the English version, a candidate would be allowed to compete if he or she was “in their 35th year”, which would have given a chance to a 34-year-old.

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But in the Irish version, he says that the candidate should have reached the age of 35.

Regarding the role of the President as ‘first citizen’, Ó Conaill had this to say.

“He is a representative of the people of Ireland and it is very difficult to say that we are a bilingual country if the first citizen of the State does not speak that language, that does not make much sense.

“The people of Ireland are not being represented then, are they?”

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