Can we afford Gaelic recruits?

PARENTS have been taking to the streets this week with their kids to protest at Highland Council spending cuts that appear set to axe 350 part-time primary school care assistants, and hundreds of other frontline local authority workers are fearing the worst from tomorrow’s budget meeting as the public spending purge heads for its long-drawn out conclusion.

Belts seemed to have been tightened, and services and facilities everywhere – not only the Highlands, but up and down the country – have been under intense financial scrutiny.

Well, almost everywhere...

For this week we discover that the Government’s Gaelic language quango Bord na Gaidhlig is on a recruitment drive – and it has even hired a non-Gaelic speaking human resources consultant to help out. That means applicants for the various jobs in the pipeline have to apply in English.

While that situation seems bizarre, what is really likely to raise eyebrows is how the organisation is managing to have the cash to employ new recruits, such as a £30K-a-year Gaelic Language Plans Officer, when almost every other public-funded body is slashing its workforce or facing a recruitment freeze for non-essential posts.

It has also been suggested that some of the new salaried posts on offer will cover work previously carried out by volunteers.

Gaelic campaigners have made strenuous efforts to keep the language alive in the area and are to be applauded for that. Perhaps in the eyes of some, an officer to co-ordinate the Gaelic language plans of other public organisations like health boards is an essential of life.

But in the eyes of those in the public sector whose days in employment will be numbered after tomorrow and to the parents affected by the cuts in schools on their children or pensioners who may lose lunch clubs, we suspect their essential priorities will lie elsewhere.