Speech by Minister Chambers at the major global innovation event, MIT Under 35, in Gaoth Dobhair

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A chairde,

Mar Aire Stát na Gaeltachta, is mian liom fáilte mhór a chur roimh na nuálaithe go léir agus na rannpháirtithe ón tír seo agus ón Eoraip chuig MIT Nuálaithe Faoi 35 2022. Tá mo Roinn thar a bheith sásta a bheith ag obair i bpáirtíocht le hÚdarás na Gaeltachta, Emtech agus leis an MIT Technology Review chun an ócáid thábhachtach seo a reáchtáil sa Ghaeltacht.

Ós rud é nach bhfuil Gaeilge ar a dtoil ag chuile dhuine anseo ar maidin labhróidh mé i mBéarla mura miste libh.

As Minister of State for the Gaeltacht, I am delighted to welcome all of the participants to the event and especially all the innovators from various parts of Europe. We are delighted to be working in partnership with Údarás na Gaeltachta, Emtech, MIT Technology Review and all other collaborators to host this event in the Gaeltacht.

An event like this is very important in highlighting the significance of innovation and creativity in achieving sustainable development. Sustainability, innovation, and creativity are central to Údarás na Gaeltachta’s vision for the Gaeltacht and are core parts of its strategy for economic, social and cultural development. An event such as this enables innovators and entrepreneurs from the Gaeltacht and, indeed, other parts of Ireland to connect with, to learn from and to explore ways to collaborate with entrepreneurs and innovators from other parts of Europe. Looking at the programme of events for the festival, it's clear that it will be of huge benefit in highlighting key innovations that are being developed and also very important in highlighting the ecosystem of supports that exists to assist innovators and entrepreneurs.

I'm glad to see that the opportunity has been seized to involve local schools in order to promote entrepreneurship among emerging generations in Donegal as part of the festival. The festival is based in the Gaoth Dobhair Business Park and around gteic@Gaoth Dobhair. As you may be aware, gteic@Gaoth Dobhair is part of the Gaeltacht digital network. This is a network of some 30 digital hubs developed and under development across Ireland’s Gaeltacht regions from Tory Island in the North to Cape Clear Island in the South. Digital hubs are being developed to support entrepreneurship, remote working and also to facilitate companies who may wish to establish satellite offices or bases in rural areas and allow employees to avail of a good quality of life and the world class facilities being offered by the hubs.

Connectivity and utilisation of new technologies are levelling the playing field for rural areas such as Ireland’s Gaeltacht and it has been demonstrated that work can be carried out just as effectively with good connectivity and facilities and with no disadvantages compared to those located in major urban areas.

New technologies are also playing their part in the development of the Irish language nationally and internationally. My department is currently completing the development of its own Digital Strategy for the Irish Language which aims to support research and development in relation to Irish language digital technologies. This will have many positive impacts for Irish speakers and Gaeltacht communities, including applications for visually impaired Irish speakers, educational applications particularly across the Irish-medium educational sector but also in English-medium settings, voice activation technology, speech to text technology and improved search engines to name but a few. This Strategy will also present opportunities for enterprise start-up for Irish-speakers, particularly in the Gaeltacht where supports offered by Údarás na Gaeltachta will be available.

Turning to highlight a number of individual projects supported by my department - the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media is supporting Trinity College Dublin in the development of the Abair.ie project. This innovative project involves researching and developing voice synthesis systems to present a wide range of dialects. This technology is of particular importance for minority languages as they increase the global visibility of the language and are attractive to the younger generation. The Irish language synthesizer can be of particular benefit to people with visual or vocal impairment, not only in terms of education but also in terms of facilitating better social inclusion. I understand that Professor Ailbhe Ní Chasaide and her young and vibrant team of researchers from Trinity College are showcasing their work here this week and I would recommend that you talk to them.

In addition, my department collaborates closely with and funds researchers in Dublin City University – GaelTech in DCU is another cutting-edge research and development language technology project for Irish, carried out in the ADAPT Centre, which is part of the School of Computing in DCU. The project will contribute to enabling the Irish language to be more easily understood, processed and interpreted by computers. Automated processing of social media texts enables us to understand the evolution of the Irish language in the Digital Age and get a clearer picture of Irish as a living language.

On 31 December 2021, we saw the ending of the derogation on the use of the Irish language in the institutions of the European Union – an important milestone for the Irish language which had been long in the planning. The ending of the derogation has seen the number of Irish speaking staff within the EU institutions increase substantially and provides a career path for those interested in pursuing a career with Irish in the EU institutions. One of the significant projects undertaken by my department to support this was the LEX/ IATE project, under which we provide funding to compile a database of EU terminology as well as terminology from Irish Statutory Instruments and to make that database available to the EU Institutions for their open-source multilingual database. This forms a vital element of the development of machine translation technology across the European Union and is a project with which my department is proud to be associated as it facilitates one of the cornerstones of the European project which is multilingualism and respect for the myriad of different cultures across the Union.

This event represents an enormous opportunity for the Gaeltacht and other rural areas and it is good to see that it is a central part of Údarás’ strategy and indeed those of other organisations serving parts of the Gaeltacht. Events such as this are of great benefit in connecting people in regions such as the Gaeltacht to like-minded people and potential collaborators in other regions of Europe and I am certain that valuable learning, exchange of ideas, and opportunities for cooperation and collaboration will emerge from this event.

Arís ba mhaith liom buíochas a ghlacadh le gach duine a bhí páirteach in eagrú na himeachta agus guím gach rath oraibh anois agus sa todhchaí.

Go raibh maith agaibh.