Present Day
The Good Friday Agreement brought peace to the streets of Northern Ireland for the first time in thirty years and led to a gradual reduction in sectarianism. The suspicions that had previously surrounded the Irish language also began to fade away, seen through the growth of Irish medium schools over the past decade. An annual survey of Cumainn across Ireland by Irish language daily, Lá Nua has shown continued growth in the society's number since the start of the decade, rising from 25 in 2003 to 168 in 2007, making it the largest in Northern Ireland and the fifth largest on the island.
2006 marked the centenary of An Cumann Gaelach with a Céilí Mór in Belfast's Wellington Park Hotel, and the publication of a second edition of Fearsaid, edited by then president, Sorcha Nic Lochlainn. The society continues to run weekly Irish classes and trips to the Gaeltacht, as well as other cultural events such as traditional music sessions, talks and film showings.
Read more about this topic: An Cumann Gaelach, QUB
Famous quotes containing the words present and/or day:
“The present necessarily betrays the past.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Any one who knows what the worth of family affection is among the lower classes, and who has seen the array of little portraits stuck over a labourer’s fireplace ... will perhaps feel with me that in counteracting the tendencies, social and industrial, which every day are sapping the healthier family affections, the sixpenny photograph is doing more for the poor than all the philanthropists in the world.”
—Macmillan’s Magazine (London, September 1871)