Almost as if they heard me talking about it yesterday, the other EU's Council of Ministers, in a blatant act of self-indulgant waste, yesterday endorsed Irish calls for Gaelige to be made an official language of the union. What this means is that legislation passed by both the Parliament and Council of Ministers will be translated into the Irish language at a cost of some €3.5 million per year.

Irish is the first language to become an official language of the EU that is not the main everyday language of any of the member states. Estimates of fluent speakers in Ireland are 20,000 or less. To quote wikipedia, "the status of Irish as an official language in the Irish Republic seems inappropiate let alone as an official language of the EU."

Follow up:

This is exactly the sort of time-wasting that the European Union is famous for. So why all the fuss? Well the motivation is decidedly suspect; the government in the Irish Republic is currently quite unpopular, particularly among those of an Irish nationalist or "republican" persuasion. At the same time, now that the beggars aren't bleeding the EU dry, they're not so fond of the United States of Europe either. This was clearly a way for the Irish government do boost the popularity of both themselves and the EU. Oh and of course the €3.5 million will presumably be pumped into paying for Irish speakers in Ireland, getting a few more people (maybe even a few Sinners from west Belfast) off the dole.

Why did the council of ministers agree to this? Well quite simply they made the mistake of signing an agreement that the official languages of all member states would be official languages of the EU. At the time they presumably didn't take into account the egos of petty nationalists in the Irish republic and let's be clear that this whole exercise is about ego. Look at the figures. €3.5 million for the translation of documents reads into a language that nobody reads.

Yet one more reason to vote no on the EU constitution if the British people are ever given a chance to reject it.