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DESPITE THE CONTROVERSY surrounding the new Gaeltacht Minister’s Irish language abilities, Joe McHugh has been giving BBC Radio 4 listeners a short Irish lesson.
“The important thing when you’re speaking Irish is there has to be a flow to it,” Joe McHugh advised ‘Broadcasting House’ presenter Paddy O’Connell.
McHugh proceeded to teach O’Connell how to say ‘go dté mar a tá tú’ (how are you) and ‘tá lá ar dóigh ann’ (it’s a great day).
When asked to translate more complicated phrases such as ‘hear much and say little’ or ‘an open mouth often catches a closed fist’, McHugh declined, saying he was looking ahead to taking a language refresher course and would not want to be “caught out on getting things wrong at this stage”.
McHugh said he was “shocked, stunned, delighted, over the moon” and “quite emotional” to be nominated for the ministerial post.
Asked about coming under pressure over his cúpla focail that when Taoiseach Enda Kenny asked him about his Irish language skills, he admitted they were “not great, but rusty” because he has not really been speaking it for twenty years.
“It’s daunting,” he said of his portfolio, “but I’m going to go into it full steam ahead.”
McHugh said his Irish refresher course would be starting first thing Monday morning. The Donegal TD said he hoped his own experiences in re-building his Irish language abilities would encourage others to do the same:
There’s a vast chunk of the population that went to school, spent 14 years, got very, very good grades in their Irish, were able to speak it when they went to school and then all of a suddenly they just lose it. When you don’t use it, you lose it. And if I can refresh myself and get there in a short period of time, I hope that will be a signal to other people that have been threatening it for years.
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Maybe they saw some lad prancing around taking photos and wanted nothing to do with it!
Looks staged to me.
course its staged, nothing great about it. same for these ‘amazing’ landscape photos doctored in editing programs. the world is full of them, the sheep know no better.
Two guys from RTE hiding under a blanket?
Here’s how dublin photographer ends his career by having work published on journal
That’s miriam o callaghan and marty whelan under that blanket
You can’t see their eyes.
A more appropriate title might be: “Europe continues to hide under the blanket long after we needed to stand as a people”
#sadnessunderablankett. Kay Burley can use that if she wants.
Brussels was on high alert because of an expected attack, yet 3 guys can walk freely into an airport loaded with bombs!! Security forces have something to answer to here.
True.
Don’t be ridiculous, I live in Belgium and use Zanvantem regularly. There are thousands of people walking into the departures hall every hour with big bags how are you supposed to identify what is in each bag. If you move security further out to entrance or somewhere else there will be queues there to target. It’s an impossible job for the security services, I believe they stop a lot of incidences that we never even get to hear about but they can’t it right 100% of the time.
I always enter the Airport with my luggage…….is there another way?
I wouldn’t be sittin’ under a window, drink or no drink.
A pair of auld boys on the sauce all day
Wouldve been a better photo without the blanket
A big bag of the white stuff. Grief my eye
#sadnessintheireyes.
Ah jaysus was afraid of this… right it was me and a munter I met down the local. Don’t know why the author says it was in Belgium as well, was only in the market bar in Dublin. I knew she was bad but to describe her as a man? Ah come on. The blanket came in handy tho for an aul danger tug.
Maybe Angela Merkel thought they were at work
It’s doent take long for so called artists and photographers to start loading these kinds of pictures on social media. Can people just let others grieve and Mourn without trying to further their own reputation
Maybe they are defying the attackers by continuing with their daily routine despite the fear. I would guess the blanket is intended to give themselves a false sense of security against possible flying glass in case of another explosion
1, 2, 3….
Peep !
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