The Gaeltacht’s existential crisis: interview with Bánú’s Maitiú de Hál
By Patrick Flynn
Rupture’s Patrick Flynn was pleased to sit down for coffee and conversation with Maitiú de Hál of the Gaeltacht housing campaign, Bánú, in Galway City recently. The following is the transcription of the recorded conversation, which has been lightly edited for clarity. Patrick began by asking Maitiú about Bánú’s origins.
Maitiú: So there's a housing crisis all over Ireland, and internationally as well, and it is systemic as opposed to being peculiar to any one place. Myself and a few others in the area of Cois Fharraige and Conamara realised that this was going to have not only all the other impacts that it has universally, but also an existential threat to a community that has survived in spite of famine and dislocation and dispossession.
The real spark was when Adhna Ní Bhraonáin penned an article three years ago about her frustrations that she wasn't able to get a place to rent, to buy, to build. It was absolutely impossible. She had fulfilled the social contract in that she had trained as a physiotherapist, and like so many others had emigrated when there wasn't work. She'd gone to Australia, tried to save up and come home, and couldn't live there. The thing is, Adhna is part of a very important family culturally and otherwise. She's a sean-nós singer, all her family are, and that fabric of the oral tradition is kept together by networks of families and communities. You have, and have always had, different stalwarts who have kept the embers aglow. That article really resonated with people. We can look at stark statistics on paper, we can dissect the housing crisis, but sometimes it really takes that human story to inspire people and to bring them together.
This must have been in winter 2023, because it was a year before the general election. We packed out a meeting in Indreabhán in Conamara, and you could feel that the frustration was palpable. We signed up different people that wanted to be part of the committee that night.
The local poet Caitlín Maude had a famous line: "Níor thug lucht na cumhachta suas a gcuid cumhachta riamh dá ndeoin féin" - those in power never conceded it of their own volition - which of course echoes the sentiments of Frederick Douglass, that power never concedes without a demand. It is one thing to be angry about a situation, but it's another to distil all that anger into a digestible demand that encompasses all the knowledge gathered about it, in a way that can be communicated en masse to everyone, no matter how much time they have to engage with the nitty-gritty.
One central figure in Bánú has been Donncha Ó hÉallaithe, who moved here from Tipperary and has been involved in the community ever since. He was involved in the Gaeltacht Civil Rights Movement at the end of the 1960s, and would very much be a continuation of that momentum - that radical history that's very apparent in the Gaeltacht and perhaps invisible in the rest of the country.
We set out our basic demands, the first being that the Gaeltacht planning guidelines would be published. This is something that had been delayed, and delayed, and delayed, and delayed, for years. The other is that the Gaeltacht Minister has had, since 2001, the power to intervene and give people assistance in building or renovating houses. That's on the books and hasn't been used since before the austerity years. This doesn't need any bureaucratic or legislative hoops. It's right there on the books, and it's live. This is perhaps the most frustrating thing - sometimes the most radical demand is the one that's already possible, because it lays bare the reasons it's being impeded.
““The other is that the Gaeltacht Minister has had, since 2001, the power to intervene and give people assistance in building or renovating houses. That’s on the books and hasn’t been used since before the austerity years.””
That shows the proactive response there had been to social crises in the Gaeltacht going back to the foundation of the state. One of the first acts of government with regard to the Gaeltacht was the Housing (Gaeltacht) Act in 1929. That came on the back of the Gaeltacht Commission in 1926, which we're celebrating the centenary of now. If many of the proposals from that time had been enacted, the Gaeltacht would perhaps be in a much healthier place than it is now. One of the main reasons so many of those proposals weren't enacted is that the rest of rural Ireland would have gone looking for the same, and this was unjustifiable in the eyes of the very tight-fisted government of the 1920s.
So those were our first two demands. The third was that Údarás na Gaeltachta would be employed to provide housing in the Gaeltacht. For your readers - what is Údarás na Gaeltachta? Údarás is the development authority for the Gaeltacht.
The boundaries of the Gaeltacht regions were drawn in 1926. The last time that was properly redone was 1956, with Ráth Chairn in County Meath added later, in the 1960s. When the Department of the Gaeltacht was set up in 1956, they set up a company called Gaeltarra Éireann to promote production and industry within the Gaeltacht.
Patrick: We actually mentioned in the last issue of Rupture how it was involved in the seaweed industry before it was privatised.
Maitiú: Yeah, exactly. They had all sorts of initiatives and factories. But a main complaint about Gaeltarra Éireann was that it wasn't democratic, and that infrastructure in the Gaeltacht was lagging behind. The Gaeltacht Civil Rights Movement in the late 1960s and 1970s wanted a high degree of autonomy for the Gaeltacht regions, which they felt had been neglected by the County Councils. They proposed a new authority that would take over the duties of Gaeltarra Éireann, but also roads, sewerage, and basic infrastructure - and which would be directly elected.
In 1979, the Údarás Bill fell short of many of those ambitions. Údarás has concerned itself primarily with employment, acting as a kind of local IDA [Industrial Development Authority]. It does have responsibilities toward the maintenance of culture and community, however. One clause in that Act - a concession to the demands - was that at any time, the responsibilities of local authorities could be signed over to Údarás. That was never used, but what we've been arguing is that Údarás could take over housing allocation in Gaeltacht areas. The Gaeltacht spans seven local authorities, and those regions are traditionally underdeveloped, so they're never high on the priority list for County Councils.
The final demand was that we'd tackle short-term lets. When we set out, there were only about 5 to 7 houses in the entire Gaeltacht listed for rent on daft.ie, with an average rent of €1,700. Things have only gotten worse - rents have gone up, and at the time there were around 1,000 short-term lets. Compare 5 or 6 houses to about 1,000, and that tells its own story. What we've been looking for - and this has been one of the hardest to tackle - is for Airbnb and the like to be approached in terms of their linguistic and community impact, which has been absolutely unsustainable. We've got all these empty houses, and people can't move home.
Those were our basic demands, and we've been fighting on various fronts ever since - through two different election cycles, two-and-a-half if you count the Galway West by-election.
Patrick: Has the campaign spread to other Gaeltachtaí?
Maitiú: It started in Indreabhán, just past An Spidéal. We were conscious from the start that within Bánú we should represent the various parts of Conamara, which is quite vast. One of the main challenges is that the housing crisis is decimating the population. In times past, people were able to live in the Gaeltacht even if unemployment was high or living conditions poor - at least you had people there. Now, so many young people are leaving not because of unemployment, but because there's nowhere to live.
In spite of that, I'm in Na Forbacha, on the eastern edge of the Connemara Gaeltacht, and we have people from Indreabhán, An Cheathrú Rua, and Conamara Láir, the central area. We've been conscious to spread our campaigning across different regions, especially where specific issues arise. One that shocked us was two sites - one in Ros an Mhíl and the other in Eanach Mheáin, out in Ceantar na nOileán, the Connemara Isles in English. Two holiday villages were getting sold for basically a song, and it hadn't occurred to the County Council that they should buy them and do them up. We called a meeting in Leitir Móir. We were conscious there are times when you should talk, and times when you should listen - these were people from Leitir Móir, they knew the area and what they wanted, and our position was: what can we do for you? We mounted the campaign and gave it a lot of publicity. Thankfully, it seems the County Council has capitulated and is going to acquire the houses in Ros an Mhíl. We haven't given up on Eanach Mheáin or Leitir Móir - we think there are still about fourteen houses out there.
Another issue was social housing falling into disrepair in Ceantar na nOileán. What the County Council thought was the most prudent thing to do was to move people from there into the likes of Bearna. The implications that that has linguistically and for the very fabric of the community are huge. Bearna is officially within the Gaeltacht, but linguistically it isn't the same as Ceantar na nOileán. Moving someone from Ceantar na nOileán to Bearna would impede the intergenerational transmission of the language; that's just the fact of the matter. We campaigned on that and won - the houses in Ceantar na nOileán will be repaired. Those are some of the smaller victories that keep us going.
When the general election was approaching, we were aware the Gaeltacht is by nature disparate and separate across different regions, so we launched Tinteán - an umbrella campaign of different Gaeltacht community groups, some more established than others.
I'm from Donegal originally. Northwest Donegal is probably the worst affected when it comes to holiday homes and empty dwellings.
Patrick: And the mica crisis as well, I suppose.
Maitiú: That's in the mix too. Because of that, you have a very high rate of age dependency - the majority of the population is young or old, with a small group in the middle looking after everyone else. That critical mass of available people isn't there, which is itself a result of the crisis we're fighting. In spite of that, people came forward from Gaeltacht communities in Donegal, Waterford, Mayo, Cork, and Kerry on a common platform with common demands for the general election.
Another victory, small as it was, was influencing the Programme for Government in January 2025. For the first time, it conceded that Údarás na Gaeltachta should have a role in housing. We've been clear about what we think that should look like. First, that Údarás should coordinate approved housing bodies to get funding directly from the Department of Housing, and build on land it already has or can acquire.
““One of the greatest challenges for any campaign is longevity, because the establishment parties are always going to be around.””
There's an area in Conamara called An Tulach, on the way into Baile na hAbhann, where TG4 is based. Údarás holds a plot of land there, beside other sites for sale. One of our biggest challenges is sewerage, which has never been addressed and is a major impediment to house-building, especially in places like An Cheathrú Rua. What we'd propose is that Údarás take that land and build on it - ideally a mixed allocation of social and affordable housing targeted at Irish speakers. They've recognised that this demand is now firmly on the lips of the public.
It's always about the follow-up then. One of the greatest challenges for any campaign is longevity, because the establishment parties are always going to be around. Grassroots, bottom-up campaigns are based on people's own free time, people that have other responsibilities that are sometimes put on the long finger. That longevity is absolutely key. The establishment is very good at giving that first concession that can take the wind out of the sails, and they can hark back and refer to it. It's the follow-up that's the real uphill struggle - keeping their feet to the fire, while also keeping the campaign relevant to the community, saying: no, we're not there yet.
Patrick: I suppose it came into the recent Galway West by-election.
Maitiú: That's an interesting one too. Housing in the Gaeltacht differs somewhat, in that the Housing (Gaeltacht) Act and other assistance schemes existed in lieu of the social housing that developed elsewhere in the country. Historically, for reasons that are apparent, the Gaeltacht has been economically underdeveloped by definition - social and economic deprivation on a par with other poor parts of the country.
Assistance for house-building on land that wasn't much good for agriculture led to a high proportion of self-building and ownership. That's why publishing the Gaeltacht planning guidelines was so important. This was something that was being repeatedly delayed. We had promise after promise from then Housing Minister Darragh O'Brien, Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív and others. We were told in 2024 they'd be published by Easter. In May 2025, myself and a Tinteán delegation met James Browne, the current Housing Minister, and Dara Calleary, the current Gaeltacht Minister, in the Department of the Gaeltacht. Dara Calleary told us they'd be published by Christmas, and I asked, "What year?" He didn't find that funny. Christmas came and went, and nothing happened.
Then came the housing strategy in November 2025. By that stage, the legislative scope for the planning guidelines had actually run out, and they said there'd be a planning statement in 2027 - already delayed five years, and now pushed out again. We modified our demand and said we wanted this to come out alongside the rural planning statement, pegged for the second half of this year. Seán Kyne actually announced this during the Galway West by-election campaign, because he and others obviously understood the importance of Gaeltacht housing in that election. What happened, however, is that it seemed to be written on the fly - it had all the hallmarks of the government doing its homework on the bus that morning, basically paperclipping the Gaeltacht housing statement onto the rural one.
Patrick: Kind of added on as an afterthought.
Maitiú: Yeah, exactly - obviously to placate the very deep feeling in the Gaeltacht around the by-election. That's hard to deny, I think. The substance just isn't there.
Our current demand is a public consultation, because we can't see that there's been any sociolinguistic input. Here's one of the most egregious examples: if there's a multi-unit development in the Cois Fharraige Language Planning Area, 80 per cent of the houses have had to be set aside for Irish speakers. The government’s new approach, and their excuse is that this will have universal implementation across the country rather than being unique to Galway, is to take the daily Irish speakers from the last census and add 10 per cent. Where I am, in Na Forbacha - not the strongest area for the language, but definitely not the weakest - the requirement for the estate I live on is 80 per cent Irish speakers. Were that estate built tomorrow, the requirement would fall to 38 per cent.
Another thing is that they’re going on the percentage of daily users, but the exam used to assess Irish proficiency can't account for daily use within the family. There used to be a grant for raising your family with Irish in the Gaeltacht, Scéim Labhairt na Gaeilge, which ran from the 1930s for around 80 years until it was axed as part of austerity. Now there's no way to track who's raising kids with Irish and who isn't.
There's no linguistic basis I can see for that figure. I don't know what they hope to achieve - do they think that this means that the linguistic landscape is going to increase by 10 per cent? No, it's not; nobody can make that argument. It's basically a sop and a concession to developers. There are other faults, but that's probably the most egregious, and we're now demanding a public consultation on it.
Patrick: I wanted to conclude on Bánú's place going forward. We saw a major Irish-language rights demonstration in Dublin last year, and Bánú has worked with CATU and the wider housing movement across Ireland. Maybe that was too wide a question, but what is Bánú's place amid these contexts?
Maitiú: I think it's a fair question. It's one we've been patently aware of from the get-go. We were aware that detractors may say: you want a special case made for you, you want a privileged position because you're Irish speakers. That's not the case at all.
Housing is a very difficult nettle to grasp - not as simple as the water-charges campaign a dozen years ago, which was a straightforward act of boycotting: don't register, don't pay. Everyone's housing situation is unique to them. The way we looked at it: if we could get a foothold in our area, make progress on social and affordable housing, or on Airbnbs, that could be an inspiration - lessons other groups could learn from, and we could work in tandem.
Somebody getting a house in Conamara isn't taking a house from anyone else, you know? We don't see it as a zero-sum game. We've coordinated with CATU and other housing activists, and we've been very much on board with linking localised campaigns into a broader national one.
People talk about this moment the Irish language is having, you know? To the cynic in me - and not so much the cynic -
Patrick: The "Kneecap Effect"?
Maitiú: The Kneecap Effect. I think English speakers are having an Irish language moment, and good for them - you're very welcome, come on in, that's great. But in tandem with that, we're having an existential crisis in the Gaeltacht, and no language survives without it being a language of a physical community.
We cannot have a conversation about the Irish language without the Gaeltacht. We can't have a conversation about the Gaeltacht without having a conversation about housing. But also, we can't have a conversation about housing without a conversation about the Irish language and the impact that housing has on it.
Patrick: I think that's a great place to conclude. Thanks so much, Maitiú.