The Consequences of Losing the Irish Language

 by Eoghan Ó Mhartaín

I've always regarded the Irish language as only being of cultural and historical value. However, having recently stumbled across the old Irish meaning for the very common place name "The Derries", I now realise that by not speaking Gaelic we have lost a valuable connection with our land. The Derries was the name given to a group (or islands) of oak tree stumps found in bogs. This comes from a reprint of a book originally printed in 1844 which itself refers to an earlier work by surveyor David Aher from 1814. It is not known whether the name was expressive of the existing condition of the bog or a traditional remembrance passed down through the generations from when there once was an oak wood that flourished in the bog. 

This brings me to Derrybrien. The official Irish name for Derrybrien is Daraidh Braoin which could mean the wet oak wood or the leaking oak wood or perhaps the last part refers to the surname Braoin or O'Brian. However, if Derry refers to the usage popular in early 1800s Ireland, then Derrybrien might actually mean the wet bog or the dripping bog. Braonach means dripping or wet.  

In light of this interpretation, it would have come to no surprise to anyone in a Gaelic speaking Ireland, that building a large industrial sized wind farm in the hilly and peaty regions of Derrybrien or "Wet Bog" would have ended up in disaster as the destructive 2003 landslide proved to be.

More recently, the landslide that occurred in Meenbog would have been equally as foreseeable as the name means "soft mountain pasture". 

Wind Farm Built to Supply Amazon Data Centres Causes Landslide

 

One would think that the planners and authorities of Ireland would have learned their lesson from the Derrybrien Wind Farm landslide that occurred in 2003. Sadly not, as another landslide has occurred during the construction of a wind farm, this time in Donegal at Meenbog.  

In 2003, a mass of peat was dislodged from an area under development for the wind farm polluting the Owendalulleegh river, causing the death of about 50 000 fish and lasting damage to the fish spawning beds. 

The Irish State has being fined € 10.5 million so far by the European Union as a result of the Derrybrien disaster. Perhaps the money would have being far better spent on re-training those working in An Bord Pleanala who gave the green light to Meenbog wind farm despite warnings from locals that it's construction could trigger a landslide.

The video above shows the scale of the recent landslide with hundreds of thousands of peat sliding into the Mourne Beg River and it's tributaries and surrounding rivers. The smaller rivers are spawning grounds for brown trout and salmon. The River Mournebeg is a designated Special Area of Conservation (SAC) and an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI). The Mournebeg river is also a tributary of the River Derg SAC. Despite these designations, both the developers and Amazon who were to use the energy from it for their data centres, got their way. So you might well say - what is the point of having protected sites at all if they can still be developed on ? Isn't the whole point of designating sites to prevent developments on or near them ?

Wind farms are a hysterical reaction to the perceived threat of climate change. And like the Polynesian tribes of Easter Island, the building of these tall structures must proceed at all costs and no matter the environmental disaster that they instigate.   There won't be any days off school to protest the destruction caused by wind farms and there wont be any extinction rebellion rallying to protect the fish, birds and bats that they destroy. 

The real environmental disaster goes on unhindered and unopposed and most disturbingly under the guise of environmentalism.