Over the past few years, the Irish language has experienced a remarkable cultural renaissance that has captured attention far beyond the shores of Ireland. From the chart-topping bilingual work of hip-hop group Kneecap and country artist CMat’s dual-language hit *Euro-Country* to Oscar-winner Jessie Buckley’s Irish-language acceptance speech, cúpla focal – the common phrase meaning “a few words” – is now popping up on city streets, university classrooms and social media feeds as far from Dublin as New York and Sydney. Even in Northern Ireland, where Irish only gained official language status a few years ago, official data shows student enrollment in Irish-medium education has jumped nearly 400% over the last 25 years, with learners of all ages and backgrounds flocking to classes.
But for a language that has held the status of Ireland’s first official language for nearly 90 years, a surprising and persistent gap remains: many major public and private entities across the Republic of Ireland still lack the ability to process fadas – the critical rising diacritics that mark long vowels in Irish orthography. This small accent is far more than a decorative mark: it alters both word pronunciation and, crucially, core meaning. A common example highlights the stakes: omitting the fada from cáca (the Irish word for cake) turns it into caca – an altogether different, and unappetizing, term.
This oversight has frustrated countless Irish speakers, even high-profile public figures. Labour Party MEP Aodhán Ó Ríordáin says he rarely encounters misspellings of his name, which includes two fadas, when working across the European Parliament in Brussels or Strasbourg, or when traveling in the United Kingdom. But back in Dublin, he received an official nameplate that stripped the fadas from his name, rendering it as “Aodhan O’Riordain.”
“It’s deeply infuriating that the only country where I struggle to get my full name, with correct fadas, recognized is my own,” Ó Ríordáin told reporters. “Corporate entities and state agencies should be far more receptive to allowing people to use the proper form of their name.” He argues the fada accessibility issue points to a long-standing, complicated relationship the island of Ireland has had with its native tongue.
That perspective is shared by historian and Irish language academic Caoimhín de Barra, who traces the current apathy toward fadas back to the founding of the Irish state in 1922. When Ireland gained independence, the language was framed as a core pillar of the new nation’s distinct cultural identity, but de Barra says the young government failed to follow through on meaningful revival efforts. After mandating Irish in primary and secondary schools, the state stepped back and assumed community groups would carry the momentum of revival, while ordinary Irish citizens expected the government to lead the work – leaving the effort stalled entirely.
Centuries of language shift had already pushed Irish to minority status by the 19th century, a process driven by the Anglo-Norman invasion, colonial plantations, economic upheaval and the mass devastation of the Great Famine. Today, as Ireland remains firmly integrated into the global English-speaking world, de Barra says that long-standing government indifference toward the language has translated into broad reluctance to accommodate linguistic markers like fadas, with many systems treating the accent as an unnecessary foreign character.
That indifference has become most visible in recent months at two of Ireland’s most high-profile flagship organizations: national airline Aer Lingus and Bank of Ireland. Both institutions currently operate IT systems that reject fadas in customer names, triggering a system prompt that only allows standard letters, spaces, apostrophes and hyphens. When Aer Lingus’s policy was revealed last month, language campaigners slammed the rule as “ludicrous” and “insulting” to Irish speakers. A BBC investigation found that competing international carriers including British Airways and KLM already allow fadas in customer booking names, putting Ireland’s national carrier out of step with global industry standards. In response to criticism, Aer Lingus issued a public apology to affected customers, noting that its core booking technology was first developed in the 1960s, but that the airline is “considering implementing reasonable steps to address this issue as part of future systems development.”
As interest in the Irish language continues to grow, more people are choosing to restore their family names to their original Irish spelling – meaning the number of people affected by the fada barrier will only rise in coming years, according to Sinn Féin’s Irish language spokesperson Aengus Ó Snodaigh. “Your name is core to your personal identity, and the Irish state has a responsibility to recognize that, especially when accommodating fadas is entirely technologically feasible in the modern era,” he said.
A recent change to Irish law already requires all public bodies to record full names and addresses, including fadas, correctly. But Ó Snodaigh has proposed a new bill before Dáil Éireann that would expand this requirement to cover private sector companies, and create a formal complaint process through the national ombudsman for people who are denied proper fada recognition by public or private entities. The bill would set an implementation deadline of January 1, 2030, giving organizations time to update their outdated IT systems to accommodate the characters.
Even as advocates push for systemic change, Irish language educators say shifting cultural attitudes are already driving progress. Alexandra Galbraith, an Irish language teacher in Northern Ireland, says growing up she was constantly asked what career use she could get out of a “dying language” – but today, learning Irish has become a popular, even trendy, pursuit. She notes that while fadas are a core, non-negotiable part of Irish grammar and syntax, the language remains accessible to new learners, and the growing mainstream interest in Irish is a promising sign for the language’s long-term future. “It’s a joy and a privilege to be able to teach it to those who maybe have never had the opportunity to learn before,” Galbraith said, adding that the current cultural moment for Irish is just the beginning of a broader revival.
