Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan 2024 – 28

con­sulta­tion report

COYLUME An Gleann Mor Glen­more An Carn Gorm Cairngorm

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Eng­lish and Gael­ic road sign © Wee Epics

Cairngorms Nation­al Park draft Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan 2024 – 28: con­sulta­tion report

Pre­pared by: Ryan Dziadowiec

Date: 9 June 2024

Descrip­tion: This report show­cases the res­ults of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority’s pub­lic con­sulta­tion on the draft Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan for 2024 – 2028, held online between 25 Janu­ary and 7 March 2024.

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Con­tents

1. Sum­mary of con­sulta­tion find­ings 4

2. Intro­duc­tion. 5 2.1 — The con­sulta­tion 5 2.2 – Sur­vey com­ple­tion 6

3. Demo­graph­ic inform­a­tion 7 3.1 – Sex and gender. 7 3.2 — Sexu­al ori­ent­a­tion 7 3.3 — Eth­ni­city 8 3.4 — Dis­ab­il­ity. 8 3.5‑Income 9 3.5 – Caring respons­ib­il­it­ies 9 3.6 — Con­nec­tion to the Nation­al Park 9 3.7 — Age range 9 3.8 – Employ­ment status.. 10

4. Con­sulta­tion find­ings 11 4.1 – Rep­res­ent­a­tion. 11 4.2 – Gael­ic abil­ity. 15 4.3 – The ​‘three stra­tegic pri­or­it­ies’ 17 4.4 – Clar­ity and intel­li­gib­il­ity. 22 4.5 – Safe­guard­ing and pro­mot­ing Gael­ic. 24 4.6 – Sug­ges­tions for improve­ment 27 4.7 – Pub­lic interest in tak­ing the plan for­ward. 31 4.8 — Oth­er com­ments 32

5. Recom­mend­a­tions .34

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1. Sum­mary of con­sulta­tion findings

Expo­nen­tial growth in engage­ment A total of 427 responses were sub­mit­ted, out of which 31 (7.3%) were in Gael­ic. This is an unpre­ced­en­ted, 1,086% increase in con­sulta­tion responses when com­pared with the 36 total responses which were sub­mit­ted to the pub­lic con­sulta­tion for the 2018 – 2022 Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan.

Over­whelm­ing sup­port 82% of respond­ents either ​‘Agree’ or ​‘Strongly agree’ with the draft Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan’s three stra­tegic pri­or­it­ies. 78% of respond­ents found the Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan to be clear and easy to under­stand. 76% of respond­ents believe that the Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan helps safe­guard and pro­mote Gael­ic lan­guage and culture.

Interest in Gael­ic among res­id­ents and vis­it­ors alike The con­sulta­tion was answered by high num­bers of vis­it­ors and res­id­ents of the Nation­al Park. Both demo­graph­ic groups showed major­ity sup­port for the Gael­ic lan­guage, and there was a large increase in respond­ents who had at least a basic under­stand­ing of Gael­ic when com­pared with the respond­ents to the 2018 2022 Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan consultation.

Sev­er­al res­id­ent respond­ents were inter­ested in tak­ing an act­ive role in ful­filling some aspects of the Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan, show­ing that there is com­munity sup­port for more Gael­ic events and edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tun­it­ies with­in the Nation­al Park area for the bene­fit of the loc­al com­munity as well as visitors.

Crit­ic­al tim­ing and chal­lenges Sev­er­al respond­ents high­lighted the crit­ic­al state of the Gael­ic lan­guage and the urgent need for action, as cap­tured in the Nation­al Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan 2023

1. Mul­tiple com­ments praised the Park Authority’s com­mit­ment to Gael­ic but noted the dif­fi­culty in Gael­ic devel­op­ment and pro­mo­tion with­in a body which did not have any flu­ent Gael­ic-speak­ing staff members.

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1. Intro­duc­tion

The Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity is in the pro­cess of pro­du­cing a new Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan for the peri­od 2024 – 2028. This is a five-year plan which demon­strates the Park Authority’s com­mit­ment to Gael­ic. As the Park Author­ity is a pub­lic body, it is leg­ally oblig­ated to pre­pare a Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan under sec­tion 3 of the Gael­ic Lan­guage (Scot­land) Act 2005. The 2024 – 2028 Plan is the third Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan pro­duced by the Park Author­ity and fol­lows on from the work of the pre­vi­ous 2018 – 2022 Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan.

There are three main object­ives out­lined in the Park Authority’s 2024 – 2028 Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan:

• Increas­ing the use of Gaelic
• Increas­ing the learn­ing of Gaelic
• Pro­mot­ing a pos­it­ive image of Gaelic

These object­ives reflect the aims and pri­or­it­ies out­lined in the Nation­al Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan 2023 – 2028, the main aim of which is to ​‘increase the use and learn­ing of Gaelic’.

2.1 – The consultation

The Park Author­ity invited feed­back from the pub­lic on its draft Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan for 2024 – 2028 through an online sur­vey (with options for paper or phone- based response too). The con­sulta­tion peri­od ran for a peri­od of six weeks, from 25 Janu­ary to 7 March 2024. The sur­vey was avail­able in both Eng­lish and Gael­ic, as is the Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan itself.

The con­sulta­tion was pro­moted extens­ively both on and off­line across a range of chan­nels. This included work­ing with social media influ­en­cer Som­hairle to pro­duce tailored Ins­tagram and Tik­Tok con­tent to engage a young­er audi­ence. We estim­ate that over 150 responses over­lapped with this activity.

Two emails were shared with over 100 con­tacts with­in the new Gael­ic Officers Net­work, which has led to mul­tiple organ­isa­tion­al responses and lots of dir­ect email cor­res­pond­ence around poten­tial partnerships.

Else­where, a spe­cif­ic media announce­ment (in Gael­ic and Eng­lish) was pre­pared and picked up by vari­ous region­al titles, along­side an ongo­ing stream of social

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media and web­site activ­ity – includ­ing the cre­ation of a ded­ic­ated con­sulta­tion land­ing page.

A total of 427 responses were received, out of which 31 (7.3%) were in Gael­ic. This is an unpre­ced­en­ted, 1,086% increase in con­sulta­tion responses when com­pared with the 36 total responses which were sub­mit­ted to the pub­lic con­sulta­tion for the 2018 – 2022 Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan.

While the total num­ber of responses sub­mit­ted in Gael­ic increased by 244% (from 9 to 31), the major­ity of this growth was among the Eng­lish responses, which increased from 27 to 396. This sug­gests an increased aware­ness of Gael­ic among the non-Gael­ic speak­ing population.

2.2 – Sur­vey completion

A sur­vey response in which at least two of the main three ques­tions were answered was con­sidered a com­plete response. 85% of responses ful­filled these cri­ter­ia, with around 15% of respond­ents to both the Gael­ic and the Eng­lish sur­veys sub­mit­ting incom­plete responses which only answered ques­tions 1 and

1. This is the reas­on why the total num­ber of responses in the ana­lyses in Sec­tion 4 (Con­sulta­tion find­ings) is lower than the total of all responses sub­mit­ted (427).

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1. Demo­graph­ic information

3.1 – Sex and gender

A total of 231 people across the Gael­ic and Eng­lish ver­sions of the sur­vey chose to answer the ques­tion ​‘Which one of the fol­low­ing best describes your gender?’. A fur­ther 165 people choose to skip it. Of those who answered, 107 (43%) chose male, 133 (54%) female, six (2%) ​‘in anoth­er way’, and one (0.4%) ​‘prefer not to say’.

Accord­ing to Scotland’s Census (from 27 March 2011) – which provided two options (male or female) – women made up 51% of the Scot­tish pop­u­la­tion and men 49%.

229 answered the ques­tion, ​‘Do you con­sider your­self to be a trans per­son?’, with 167 skip­ping it. Of those who answered, eight (3%) said yes, 231 (94%) said no, and a fur­ther six people (2%) said ​‘prefer not to say’.

Accord­ing to the 2018 Health Care Needs Assess­ment of Gender Iden­tity Ser­vices report, while there is no pre­cise estim­ate of the num­ber of trans or non- bin­ary people in Scot­land, the most com­monly used fig­ure for trans people is 0.5% of the pop­u­la­tion, equi­val­ent to almost 24,000 adults. This would sug­gest that a high­er num­ber of trans or non-bin­ary people answered the sur­vey than might be expec­ted from gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion trends.

3.2 — Sexu­al orientation

A total of 240 people answered the ques­tion, ​‘Which of the fol­low­ing best described your sexu­al ori­ent­a­tion?’, with 187 skip­ping it. Of those who answered,

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23 (10%) said bi / bisexu­al, 26 (11%) said gay / les­bi­an, 174 (73%) said het­ero­sexu­al / straight, 17 (3%) said ​‘prefer not to say’.

By way of com­par­is­on, a 2015 report from the Office of Nation­al Stat­ist­ics (ONS) sug­ges­ted that 95% of the Scot­tish pop­u­la­tion iden­ti­fied as het­ero­sexu­al, 1.0% as gay or les­bi­an, 0.6% as bisexu­al, 0.4% oth­er, and 2.8% prefer not to say.

3.3 — Ethnicity

A total of 245 people answered the ques­tion, ​‘What is your eth­ic group?’. A fur­ther 182 chose to skip it. Of those who answered, 227 (93%) answered ​‘White Scot­tish, White Irish, White Gypsy / Trav­el­ler, White Brit­ish’, three (1%) answered ​‘Mixed or mul­tiple eth­nic groups’, 31 (13%) answered ​‘Oth­er’, and two (1%) answered ​‘Prefer not to say’.

By way of com­par­is­on, accord­ing to the 2011 Scot­tish Census, 98.5% of res­id­ents in the five loc­al author­ity areas cov­er­ing the Cairngorms Nation­al Park were ​‘White Scot­tish, White Irish, White Gypsy / Trav­el­ler, White Brit­ish’, 0.9% were ​‘Asi­an, Asi­an Scot­tish or Asi­an Brit­ish’ and 0.6% were ​‘Oth­er eth­nic groups’.

3.4 — Disability

244 people answered the ques­tion, ​‘Are you cur­rently liv­ing with any phys­ic­al or men­tal health con­di­tions or ill­nesses?’. 183 people skipped this ques­tion. Of those who answered, 53 (22%) said yes, 183 (75%) said no, and eight (3%) said ​‘prefer not to say’.

The word­ing of this ques­tion var­ied slightly from the last census in terms of the options avail­able to par­ti­cipants. Where­as Scotland’s Census 2011 had the option of ​‘Yes, lim­ited a lot’, ​‘Yes, lim­ited a little’ and ​‘No’, this sur­vey included a more bin­ary yes / no choice. This will be amended in future con­sulta­tion activity.

For con­text, 80.4% of the Scot­tish pop­u­la­tion said their day-to-day activ­it­ies were not lim­ited, 10.1% said their activ­it­ies were lim­ited a little, and 9.6% said their activ­it­ies were lim­ited a lot. Whilst a dir­ect com­par­is­on is not pos­sible, the fig­ures from the con­sulta­tion are broadly in line with these statistics.

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3.5‑Income

A total of 244 people answered the ques­tion, ​‘Do you con­sider your­self to be on a low income?’, with 183 people skip­ping the ques­tion. Of those who respon­ded, 63 (26%) said yes, 169 (69%) said no, and 12 (5%) said ​‘prefer not to say’.

Accord­ing to the 2011 Scot­tish Census, 14% of indi­vidu­als in Scot­land were liv­ing in rel­at­ive poverty after hous­ing costs were factored in.

3.5 — Caring responsibilities

245 people answered the ques­tion, ​‘Do you have any caring respons­ib­il­it­ies?’. 165 people skipped this ques­tion. Of those who answered, 45 (18%) said yes, 197 (80%) said no, and three (1%) said ​‘prefer not to say’.

Accord­ing to the 2011 Scot­tish Census, 9.3% of the Scot­tish pop­u­la­tion have caring responsibilities.

3.6 — Con­nec­tion to the Nation­al Park

A total of 239 people answered the ques­tion, ​‘What is your con­nec­tion with the Cairngorms Nation­al Park (select all that apply)?’, with 188 people skip­ping the ques­tion. Of those who respon­ded, 15 (6%) said ​‘Busi­ness own­er or employ­ee’, one (0.4%) said ​‘Part­ner organ­isa­tion’, four (2%) said ​‘Com­munity group mem­ber’, five (2%) said ​‘Staff / board mem­ber or Park Author­ity volun­teer’, five (2%) said ​‘Land man­ager or work­er’, 163 (68%) said ​‘Vis­it­or’, 74 (31%) said ​‘Loc­al res­id­ent’, four (2%) said ​‘Prefer not to say’, and 17 (7%) said ​‘Oth­er’. Please note, as people could select mul­tiple options, the total does not add up to 100%.

3.7 — Age range

A total of 248 people answered the ques­tion, ​‘What is your age group?’, with 179 choos­ing to skip it. Of those who respon­ded, 80 (32%) said 16 – 24, 56 (23%) said

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25 – 34, 28 (11%) said 35 – 44, 33 (13%) said 45 – 54, 29 (12%) said 55 – 64, 20 (8%) said 65 or over, and two (1%) said ​‘Prefer not to say’.

The 2011 census repor­ted that 11.9% of Scotland’s pop­u­la­tion was aged 16 – 24, 12.6% between 25 – 34, 13.9% between 35 – 44, 14.9% between 45 and 54, 12.6% between 55 – 64, and 16.8% over 65. How­ever, the pop­u­la­tion of the Nation­al Park skews older as com­pared to the rest of Scot­land, and there has been a decline in the num­ber of 16 – 24-year-olds since the last census was com­pleted (eg the UK fig­ure declined by 20,000 last year alone).

3.8 — Employ­ment status

246 people answered the ques­tion, ​‘What is your employ­ment status?’, with 181 people choos­ing to skip it. Of those who respon­ded, 120 (49%) were full-time employed, 27 (11%) were part-time employed, 19 (8%) were self-employed, 45 (18%) were in an appren­tice­ship / train­ing / study­ing, 27 (11%) were retired, sev­en (3%) were unem­ployed, one (0.4%) selec­ted ​‘Prefer not to say’, and five (2%) said ​‘Oth­er’.

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1. Con­sulta­tion findings

The fol­low­ing sec­tion focuses on the answers to ques­tions 1 – 8 of the con­sulta­tion; that is, the ques­tions not relat­ing to equal­ity and diversity.

There was a total of 427 responses sub­mit­ted to the online con­sulta­tion for the Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan. 31 of these were Gael­ic lan­guage responses and 396 were in Eng­lish. A fur­ther three responses were sub­mit­ted via altern­at­ive means (two emails and one hand-writ­ten let­ter). While these did not fol­low the struc­ture of the sur­vey or provide any demo­graph­ic inform­a­tion, their input was included in the ana­lys­is of findings.

Ques­tions 1 – 5 were mul­tiple choice ques­tions, allow­ing for a quant­it­at­ive ana­lys­is of answers. Ques­tions 3 – 5 had fol­low-up ques­tions which encour­aged respond­ents to explain their answers. Ques­tions 6 – 8 were open ques­tions. The data from the fol­low-up and open ques­tions was ana­lysed qual­it­at­ively, focus­ing on find­ing com­mon themes and threads in order to paint a rep­res­ent­at­ive pic­ture of the public’s response to the Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan.

4.1 – Representation

Both the Eng­lish- and Gael­ic-lan­guage sur­vey vari­ants asked respond­ents wheth­er they are respond­ing to the Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan con­sulta­tion as one or more of the fol­low­ing categories:

• Res­id­ent
• Busi­ness – tourism
• Busi­ness — non-tourism
• Vis­it­or
• Mem­ber of a Gael­ic organisation
• Com­munity representative
• Pupil at a Gael­ic Medi­um Edu­ca­tion school
• Teach­er at a Gael­ic Medi­um Edu­ca­tion school
• Stu­dent or adult learn­ing Gaelic
• Oth­er pub­lic sec­tor organisation
• Staff or Board member
• Oth­er

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All (100%) of the respond­ents who filled in this sur­vey in both lan­guages answered this ques­tion. While this equals 427 indi­vidu­al sur­veys, the pos­sib­il­ity of select­ing more than one option means that the real num­ber of responses to this par­tic­u­lar ques­tion was 490.

Fig­ure 1: Data show­ing what group respond­ents iden­ti­fied them­selves as belong­ing to when filling in the Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan con­sulta­tion. N=490.

Vis­it­ors 179 respond­ents iden­ti­fied as filling in the sur­vey as ​‘vis­it­ors’ of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. Of these 179 people, 38 (around 21%) iden­ti­fied as being ​‘vis­it­ors’ as well as one oth­er cat­egory. In total, over 40% of respond­ents iden­ti­fied as ​‘vis­it­ors’ of the Nation­al Park, mak­ing this the largest group of respondents.

Res­id­ents 142 respond­ents iden­ti­fied as filling in the sur­vey as ​‘res­id­ents’ of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. Of these 142 people, 26 (around 18%) iden­ti­fied as being ​‘res­id­ents’ as well as one oth­er cat­egory. In total, around a third of respondents

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iden­ti­fied as ​‘res­id­ents’ of the Nation­al Park, mak­ing this the second-largest group of respondents.

Busi­nesses – tour­ism and non-tour­ism 20 respond­ents iden­ti­fied as filling in the sur­vey as either rep­res­ent­ing a ​‘tour­ism’ or ​‘non-tour­ism busi­ness’. There were around twice as many people rep­res­ent­ing a ​‘tour­ism busi­ness’ (13) as there were a ​‘non-tour­ism busi­ness’ (sev­en), likely reflect­ing the pro­por­tion­ally lar­ger share the tour­ism industry has with­in the eco­nomy of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park area com­pared to the nation­al average.

Mem­bers of a Gael­ic organ­isa­tion 14 respond­ents iden­ti­fied as filling in the sur­vey as ​‘mem­bers of a Gael­ic organ­isa­tion’, mak­ing up around 3% of the total responses. By com­par­is­on, in the pub­lic con­sulta­tion for the Park Authority’s 2018 – 2022 Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan, only three respond­ents iden­ti­fied as ​‘mem­bers of a Gael­ic organ­isa­tion’, mak­ing up around 8% of those surveyed.

Com­munity rep­res­ent­at­ives Three respond­ents iden­ti­fied as filling in the sur­vey as ​‘com­munity rep­res­ent­at­ives’. Two of these respond­ents sim­ul­tan­eously iden­ti­fied with oth­er groups: one of them was a ​‘com­munity rep­res­ent­at­ive’ as well as rep­res­ent­ing a ​‘busi­ness – tour­ism’ and identi­fy­ing as a ​‘vis­it­or’; one was a ​‘com­munity rep­res­ent­at­ive’ as well as rep­res­ent­ing a ​‘busi­ness – tour­ism’ and identi­fy­ing as a ​‘res­id­ent’.

Pupils and teach­ers at Gael­ic Medi­um Edu­ca­tion schools Sev­en respond­ents iden­ti­fied as filling in the sur­vey as either a ​‘pupil at a Gael­ic Medi­um Edu­ca­tion school’ or a ​‘teach­er at a Gael­ic Medi­um Edu­ca­tion school’. The split was almost even, with four respond­ents identi­fy­ing as ​‘pupils’ and three

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as ​‘teach­ers’. Of those identi­fy­ing with these two groups, two ​‘pupils’ and one ​‘teach­er’ filled in the Gael­ic-lan­guage survey.

By com­par­is­on, in the pub­lic con­sulta­tion for the Park Authority’s 2018 – 2022 Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan, only one respond­ent iden­ti­fied as a ​‘teach­er at a Gael­ic Medi­um Edu­ca­tion school’ (3%) and no respond­ents iden­ti­fied as a ​‘pupil at a Gael­ic Medi­um Edu­ca­tion school’.

Stu­dents or adults learn­ing Gael­ic 91 respond­ents iden­ti­fied as filling in the sur­vey as a ​‘stu­dent or adult learn­ing Gael­ic’. In total, a little over a fifth (around 21%) of respond­ents iden­ti­fied as a ​‘stu­dent or adult learn­ing Gael­ic’, mak­ing this the third-largest group of respond­ents. This sug­gests that a large num­ber of stu­dents or adults learn­ing Gael­ic wish to express their views on the Park Authority’s Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan.

By com­par­is­on, in the pub­lic con­sulta­tion for the Park Authority’s 2018 – 2022 Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan only five people (14%) iden­ti­fied as a ​‘stu­dent or adult learn­ing Gaelic’.

Oth­er pub­lic sec­tor organ­isa­tions Sev­en respond­ents iden­ti­fied as filling in the sur­vey as a mem­ber of an ​‘oth­er pub­lic sec­tor organ­isa­tion’. As the sur­vey did not ask to spe­cify, it is unclear what these oth­er pub­lic sec­tor organ­isa­tions may be. Four respond­ents who iden­ti­fied as a mem­ber of an ​‘oth­er pub­lic sec­tor organ­isa­tion’ answered the Eng­lish- lan­guage sur­vey, and three respond­ents who iden­ti­fied as such answered the Gael­ic-lan­guage survey.

Park Author­ity staff or board mem­bers Four respond­ents iden­ti­fied as filling in the sur­vey as a ​‘Park Author­ity staff or board mem­ber’. Three respond­ents who iden­ti­fied as a ​‘Park Author­ity staff or board mem­ber’ answered the Eng­lish-lan­guage sur­vey, and one respond­ent who iden­ti­fied as such answered the Gael­ic-lan­guage survey.

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In the pub­lic con­sulta­tion for the Park Authority’s 2018 – 2022 Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan there were also four responses from a ​‘Park Author­ity staff or board member’.

Oth­er 23 respond­ents iden­ti­fied as filling in the sur­vey as a mem­ber of an ​‘oth­er’ group not lis­ted above. Those who selec­ted this option were asked to spe­cify, and the res­ults were as fol­lows: six iden­ti­fied as mem­bers of the gen­er­al pub­lic; four iden­ti­fied as a teach­er, pupil, or par­ent of a pupil in a Gael­ic Medi­um Edu­ca­tion school; four iden­ti­fied as an adult learner or ​‘sup­port­er’ of Gael­ic; three iden­ti­fied as either a former or future res­id­ent of the Nation­al Park area; two iden­ti­fied as a ​‘volun­teer’; one iden­ti­fied as a ​‘tour­ist’; one iden­ti­fied as a ​‘retired farm­er’; one iden­ti­fied as an ​‘out­door instruct­or’; and one iden­ti­fied as an employ­ee of Fèis Spè, the branch of the Gael­ic cul­tur­al out­reach Fèis organ­isa­tion for the Strath­spey and Badenoch region.

4.2 – Gael­ic abil­ity All (100%) of the respond­ents who filled in this sur­vey in both lan­guages answered this question.

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Fig­ure 2: Gael­ic abil­ity repor­ted in Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan sur­vey. N=427.

139 people (around 32%) repor­ted hav­ing ​‘no Gael­ic abil­ity at all’, 58 people (around 14%) repor­ted being ​‘flu­ent Gael­ic speak­ers’, and a major­ity of 230 people (around 54%) repor­ted hav­ing ​‘some basic under­stand­ing’ of Gaelic.

By com­par­is­on, in the pub­lic con­sulta­tion for the Park Authority’s 2018 – 2022 Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan, 15 respond­ents (42%) repor­ted hav­ing ​‘no Gael­ic abil­ity at all’, nine respond­ents (25%) repor­ted hav­ing ​‘some’ Gael­ic abil­ity, and 12 (33%) repor­ted being fully flu­ent. This shows that, as interest in the Park Authority’s Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan grew expo­nen­tially, the biggest demo­graph­ic increase was among those who have ​‘some basic under­stand­ing’ of Gaelic.

This is sup­por­ted by the find­ings of the Scot­tish Social Atti­tudes Sur­vey, which repor­ted that ​‘the num­ber of Scots who can speak some Gael­ic has doubled’ between 2012 and 2022. While the num­ber of flu­ent Gael­ic speak­ers who answered the sur­vey more than quad­rupled, their pro­por­tion­al share decreased due to the great­er increase among the two oth­er cohorts.

Unsur­pris­ingly, among the 31 people who answered the sur­vey in Gael­ic, there were no respond­ents report­ing to have ​‘no Gael­ic abil­ity at all’. 25 respond­ents to the Gael­ic-lan­guage sur­vey were flu­ent Gael­ic speak­ers (around 81%) and six had ​‘some basic under­stand­ing’ of Gael­ic (around 19%). Between the two

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sur­veys, 73 people who repor­ted hav­ing ​‘some basic under­stand­ing’ of Gael­ic also iden­ti­fied as ​‘res­id­ents’ of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park, and 10 of the people who repor­ted being ​‘flu­ent Gael­ic speak­ers’ also iden­ti­fied as ​‘res­id­ents’. By con­trast, 59 people who iden­ti­fied as hav­ing ​‘no Gael­ic abil­ity at all’ also iden­ti­fied as ​‘res­id­ents’.

This sug­gests that the demo­graph­ic of Cairngorms Nation­al Park res­id­ents who have at least a basic level of Gael­ic abil­ity showed a high level of engage­ment with the Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan consultation.

4.3 – The ​‘three stra­tegic priorities’

Ques­tion 3 asked the respond­ents wheth­er they agree or dis­agree with the three stra­tegic pri­or­it­ies of the Park Authority’s new Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan, ie ​‘increas­ing the use of Gael­ic’, ​‘increas­ing the learn­ing of Gael­ic’, and ​‘pro­mot­ing a pos­it­ive image of Gaelic’.

338 respond­ents answered this ques­tion in the Eng­lish-lan­guage sur­vey and 26 respond­ents answered it in the Gael­ic-lan­guage sur­vey, mak­ing 364 the total num­ber of responses to this ques­tion. This gives a com­ple­tion rate of about 85%.

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Fig­ure 3: Responses to Q3 in both the Gael­ic-lan­guage and Eng­lish-lan­guage sur­vey. N=364.

A total of 82% of all respond­ents either ​‘Agree’ or ​‘Strongly agree’ with the draft Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan’s three stra­tegic pri­or­it­ies, show­ing that an over­whelm­ing major­ity of those who answered the sur­vey agreed that the new Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan should focus on ​‘increas­ing the use of Gael­ic’, ​‘increas­ing the learn­ing of Gael­ic’ and ​‘pro­mot­ing a pos­it­ive image of Gael­ic’. This is an improve­ment on the fig­ure from the 2018 – 2022 Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan con­sulta­tion, where 58% of respond­ents either ​‘Agreed’ or ​‘Strongly agreed’ with the pri­or­it­ies set out.

2% of respond­ents ​‘Neither agree nor dis­agree’ with these pri­or­it­ies, and a total of 18% of all respond­ents either ​‘Dis­agree’ or ​‘Strongly dis­agree’ with these priorities.

Of the Gael­ic-lan­guage responses only, six ​‘Agree’, 18 ​‘Strongly agree’, and two ​‘Neither agree nor dis­agree’, show­ing an almost unan­im­ous sup­port for the Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan’s three pri­or­it­ies in the Gael­ic-speak­ing cohort.

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Fig­ure 3: Responses to Q3 in the Gael­ic-lan­guage sur­vey only. N=26.

An inter­est­ing pat­tern emerged when the answers for this ques­tion were com­pared side-by-side with answers to Q2 (Gael­ic abil­ity). Of the 67 people who ​‘Agree’, 10 iden­ti­fied as ​‘Flu­ent Gael­ic speak­ers’, 40 as hav­ing ​‘Some basic under­stand­ing of Gael­ic’, and 17 as hav­ing ​‘None’. Of the 221 who ​‘Strongly agree’, 36 iden­ti­fied as ​‘Flu­ent Gael­ic speak­ers’, 147 as hav­ing ​‘Some basic under­stand­ing of Gael­ic’, and 48 as hav­ing ​‘None’. Of the 7 people who ​‘Neither agree nor dis­agree’, 4 iden­ti­fied as ​‘Flu­ent Gael­ic speak­ers’ and 3 as hav­ing ​‘Some basic under­stand­ing’ of Gael­ic. Of the 16 who ​‘Dis­agree’, 3 iden­ti­fied as hav­ing ​‘Some basic under­stand­ing of Gael­ic’ and 13 as hav­ing ​‘None’. Of the 43 who ​‘Strongly dis­agree’, 5 iden­ti­fied as hav­ing ​‘Some basic under­stand­ing of Gael­ic’ and 38 as hav­ing ​‘None’.

This shows that flu­ent Gael­ic speak­ers over­whelm­ingly agreed with the pri­or­it­ies set out in the draft plan (with four remain­ing neut­ral). It shows that people with a basic under­stand­ing of Gael­ic also over­whelm­ingly agreed with the draft plan’s pri­or­it­ies (with three remain­ing neut­ral). This also shows that the major­ity of people with no Gael­ic abil­ity at all were also sup­port­ive of the pri­or­it­ies set out (65 people out of 116, or around 56%).

There was a minor­ity of respond­ents who dis­agreed with the pri­or­it­ies set out in the draft plan (59 in total), and these respond­ents over­whelm­ingly had no Gael­ic lan­guage abil­ity at all (51 in total). There would appear to be a correlation

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between hav­ing even a basic know­ledge of Gael­ic and being sup­port­ive of the Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan’s priorities.

Ques­tion 3 was answered by a total of 120 respond­ents who iden­ti­fied as answer­ing the sur­vey as ​‘Res­id­ents’ of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. A total of 90 ​‘Res­id­ents’ either ​‘Agree’ or ​‘Strongly agree’ with the pri­or­it­ies of the Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan. Three ​‘Res­id­ents’ stated that they ​‘Neither agree nor dis­agree’ with these pri­or­it­ies, while a total of 27 ​‘Res­id­ents’ either ​‘Dis­agree’ or ​‘Strongly dis­agree’. This shows that the over­whelm­ing major­ity of the Nation­al Park’s res­id­ents who engaged with the con­sulta­tion are sup­port­ive of the Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan’s priorities.

Fur­ther com­ments A total of 151 respond­ents had fur­ther com­ments for Q3; 145 of these were in Eng­lish and six were in Gael­ic. 93 of these fur­ther com­ments were pos­it­ive and sup­port­ive of the aims of the Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan.

Fig­ure 4: key themes appear­ing in the pos­it­ive fur­ther com­ments for Q3.

These pos­it­ive com­ments reflec­ted the respond­ents’ per­cep­tions of the Gael­ic lan­guage, with 12 respond­ents men­tion­ing ​‘her­it­age’, nine men­tion­ing ​‘his­tory’, 22 men­tion­ing ​‘cul­ture’, sev­en men­tion­ing Gael­ic as the loc­al or nation­al ​‘nat­ive lan­guage’, 14 men­tion­ing ​‘place-names’, and 13 men­tion­ing Gael­ic as being ​‘key to under­stand­ing the loc­al land­scape’ or help­ing to foster ​‘con­nec­ted­ness to nature’.

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There were also 27 pos­it­ive com­ments with sug­ges­tions on how the Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan could be improved. 22 of these com­ments urged the Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan to strive towards the cre­ation of more Gael­ic edu­ca­tion oppor­tun­it­ies across all age groups: early years, school-aged chil­dren, and adult classes (some­thing that is bey­ond the Park Authority’s remit).

Six respond­ents urged the Park Author­ity to adopt a ​‘Gael­ic first’ policy – after the Welsh mod­el – with regards to place-names, sig­nage, and oth­er offi­cial mat­ters. Five respond­ents men­tioned the need for more con­crete com­mit­ments to avoid ​‘token­ism’. Three Gael­ic-lan­guage respond­ents urged the Park Author­ity to apply a more loc­al­ised meth­od­o­logy, approach­ing loc­al sean­na­chaid­hean (tra­di­tion- bear­ers) to research loc­al memory of Gael­ic, and put­ting dual­chas (Gael­ic intan­gible cul­tur­al her­it­age) at the centre of the Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan.

44 of the fur­ther com­ments for Q3 were neg­at­ive com­ments about the Gael­ic lan­guage itself, or the Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan as a whole, rather than its three key pri­or­it­ies. Many of these com­ments stated that Gael­ic is ​‘point­less’ or ​‘dead’. One com­ment called it ​‘the lan­guage of invaders’.

The major­ity of these com­ments emphas­ised that the Park Author­ity has ​‘lim­ited resources’ and that these resources would be bet­ter spent on ​‘oth­er things’ which per­tain to a lar­ger pro­por­tion of the Nation­al Park’s res­id­ent pop­u­la­tion. Some of these com­ments sug­gest that since only 3.6% of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park’s res­id­ent pop­u­la­tion can speak Gael­ic, only 3.6% of the pop­u­la­tion bene­fits from pub­lic fund­ing for Gael­ic. This is con­trary to the large volume of pos­it­ive responses and com­ments left by respond­ents who iden­ti­fied as both ​‘Res­id­ents’ and ​‘Vis­it­ors’ to the Nation­al Park area and stated that they have no Gael­ic lan­guage abil­ity at all.

Sev­en of the fur­ther com­ments for Q3 were neut­ral and expressed either uncer­tain­ties or sug­ges­tions for improve­ment. Sev­er­al people expressed uncer­tainty about where respons­ib­il­ity for the deliv­ery of Gael­ic ser­vices lies wheth­er it was Edu­ca­tion Scot­land, High­land Coun­cil, or the Park Author­ity sug­gest­ing that the Park Author­ity may need to improve its clar­ity of com­mu­nic­a­tion as to which respons­ib­il­it­ies lie with the Park Author­ity and which ones lie with oth­er pub­lic bodies.

Oth­ers sug­ges­ted that the Gael­ic lan­guage should be pro­moted in tan­dem with Gael­ic cul­ture, rather than a purely lin­guist­ic focus. This con­nects with some of the Gael­ic-lan­guage com­ments which encour­aged a focus on dual­chas (Gael­ic intan­gible cul­tur­al her­it­age) and the need for a more loc­al­ised approach to Gael­ic research and promotion.

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4.4 — Clar­ity and intelligibility

Ques­tion 4 asked the respond­ents wheth­er they agree or dis­agree that the Park Authority’s draft Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan is clear and easy to understand.

338 respond­ents answered this ques­tion in the Eng­lish-lan­guage sur­vey and 26 respond­ents answered it in the Gael­ic-lan­guage sur­vey, mak­ing 364 the total num­ber of responses to this ques­tion. This is the same rate of responses as Q3, which means Q4 also has a com­ple­tion rate of about 85% in both the Gael­ic- lan­guage and Eng­lish-lan­guage consultation.

Fig­ure 5: Responses to Q4 in both the Gael­ic-lan­guage and Eng­lish-lan­guage sur­vey. N=364.

A total of 78% of all respond­ents either ​‘Agree’ or ​‘Strongly agree’ that the draft Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan is ​‘clear and easy to under­stand’. This num­ber is sim­il­ar to the 81% of people who thought the Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan was ​‘clear and easy to under­stand’ in the 2018 – 2022 Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan consultation.

17% of respond­ents ​‘Neither agree nor dis­agree’ that the draft plan is ​‘clear and easy to under­stand’. A total of 3% of all respond­ents either ​‘Dis­agree’ or ​‘Strongly disagree’.

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Of the Gael­ic-lan­guage responses only, 15 ​‘Agree’, 10 ​‘Strongly agree’, and one ​‘Neither agrees nor dis­agrees’, show­ing that among the Gael­ic-speak­ing cohort there is an almost unan­im­ous con­sensus that the Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan is clear and easy to understand.

Q4 was answered by a total of 120 respond­ents who iden­ti­fied as answer­ing the sur­vey as ​‘Res­id­ents’ of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. A total of 85 ​‘Res­id­ents’ either ​‘Agree’ or ​‘Strongly agree’ that the Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan is clear and easy to under­stand. 29 ​‘Res­id­ents’ stated that they ​‘Neither agree nor dis­agree’ that the Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan is ​‘clear and easy to under­stand’, while a total of six ​‘Res­id­ents’ either ​‘Dis­agree’ or ​‘Strongly dis­agree’. This shows that the major­ity of Nation­al Park res­id­ents who engaged with the con­sulta­tion found the draft Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan to be clear and easy to understand.

Fur­ther com­ments A total of 52 respond­ents had fur­ther com­ments for Q4; 49 of these were in Eng­lish and three were in Gael­ic. 27 of these com­ments were pos­it­ive and sup­port­ive of the draft Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan.

Fig­ure 6: key words appear­ing in the pos­it­ive fur­ther com­ments for Q4.

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These pos­it­ive com­ments reflec­ted the respond­ents’ per­cep­tions of the draft Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan as clear and easy to under­stand. 11 respond­ents called the GLP ​‘clear’, three respond­ents praised it as ​‘access­ible’, and three respond­ents had pos­it­ive feed­back about its ​‘struc­ture’.

10 of the fur­ther com­ments for Q4 were neg­at­ive, although these were neg­at­ive towards pub­lic spend­ing on Gael­ic in gen­er­al rather than the clar­ity and intel­li­gib­il­ity of the Park Authority’s Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan. Three respond­ents said the plan is a ​‘waste of money’, one respond­ent said it was ​‘polit­ic­ally inspired’, and two respond­ents said that they ​‘didn’t even want to read it’.

Nine of the fur­ther com­ments for Q4 were neut­ral com­ments with sug­ges­tions for improve­ment. Eight respond­ents men­tioned the plan’s length and struc­ture, stat­ing that it is ​‘wordy’, ​‘too long’, or ​‘too