Government allocates €4.9m in grants for Irish language digital projects at DCU
Minister for Rural and Community Development and the Gaeltacht Dara Calleary today announced the approval of a grant of up to €4,013,886, over a period of four years (2026-2029), for Gaois – the research group of Fiontar & Scoil na Gaeilge in Dublin City University (DCU) – to significantly develop its Dúchas, Logainm, Corpas, Canúint, and Ainm projects.
As well as this investment, the Minister announced €900,000 in funding over a period of three years for Adapt Research Centre’s eSTÓR project in the University.
The projects developed by Gaois are state-of-the-art research and reference resources which provide a comprehensive facility to the Irish language community focused on the development of innovative resources to sustain the language and learning of Irish.
Students, teachers, journalists, translators and the wider public can easily access the content through searching on on Irish folklore collection; placenames database Logainm.ie; national corpus of the Irish language Corpas.ie; National Corpus of the Irish Language, which includes both written and oral material; repository of Irish dialects Canúint.ie; and national database of Irish-language giographies Ainm.ie.
This funding will enable Gaois to develop greater integration between the sites, to provide more powerful search facilities, and to ensure a structured supply of information in a measured way to AI models. Additionally, it will advance the Gaois working groups; develop the next generation of technicians and researchers; and sustain the resources’ userbase.
As well as the funding announced for Gaois projects, the Minister announced a grant of €900,000 over a three-year period for ADAPT Research Centre’s eSTÓR project in Dublin City University.
eSTÓR was established to provide a central national facility in which bilingual language data from public bodies – such as bilingual Irish/English documents – could be compiled and shared.
With this financial support, users of the platform will be able to continue providing their language resources and sharing them on the national portal, eSTÓR. Those resources will benefit the Government of Ireland and the machine translation platform of the European Commission, eTranslation.
Minister Calleary said: “The sites developed by Gaois are highly important resources which benefit students, researchers, teachers and the wider Irish-language community. The Irish language and its community have a unique history, and it is important that as much of that history as possible is recorded and archived, and provided to the public in an engaging and modern way. Online Irish-language resources are essential to ensuring that the language benefits from the potential created by the digital technologies of our time.”
The President of Dublin City University Prof Dáire Keogh said: “This grant shows the University’s research excellence in this field and recognises the achievements of the Gaois research group in terms of providing innovative and reliable resources to millions of users across the world, as well as the vital work being undertaken by the Adapt Research Centre as they the develop the service that delivers eSTÓR.”
Minister Calleary also launched the Irish-language version of AI Literacy in the Classroom – a free online course developed by the Adapt Research Centre for post-primary teachers.
The English version of this project commenced in October 2024 and includes regional workshops, in-school training in DEIS schools, and training for student teachers. This course – now available in Irish – is a unique opportunity to address artificial intelligence in the context of the classroom.
TechCentral Reporters
Subscribers 0
Fans 0
Followers 0
Followers