Dara Calleary T.D., Minister for Rural and Community Development and the Gaeltacht, today launched three major initiatives at Dublin City University that will significantly advance Ireland’s Irish-language digital infrastructure and the country’s capacity to navigate artificial intelligence (AI) in education.
Gaois: The Minister announced funding of €4 million over the next four years to support the expansion of five linked Irish-language digital projects run by the Gaois research group in Fiontar & Scoil na Gaeilge. Logainm, the Placenames Database of Ireland, will be enhanced by the addition of a sister site focusing on Irish streetnames and by the incorporation of data from the Northern Ireland Placenames Project. Dúchas, the project to digitise the National Folklore Collection, in collaboration with UCD, will get a redeveloped public interface and see the addition of archival video material for the first time. Canúint, the Repository of Irish Dialects, will be greatly expanded with an additional 500 hours of audio, including recordings from Scotland and the Isle of Man. Corpas, the National Corpus of Irish, will be continually updated and two significant new subcorpora will be added. Ainm, the Database of Irish-language Biographies will get a revamped website while many of the most regularly accessed biographies will receive updates to reflect recent scholarship.
eSTÓR (Language Data Hosted for Electronic Data Processing ) is a Government-funded project that allows those working in public administration across Ireland to compile and share language data through a dedicated online platform (estor.ie). This language data helps to improve public sector translation services through Irish and ensures that more public services are provided through Irish, nationally and in Europe.
Today, the Minister announced funding of €900K over the next three years to support eSTÓR and to continue the technological research aimed at improving the digital supports available for Irish. With this renewed funding, eSTÓR aims to narrow the language data gap for Irish, develop new neural Language Models tailored for Irish, with evaluation-driven research and develop stronger evaluation methods and datasets to help benchmark both general-purpose and task-specific AI language systems.
AI Literacy in the Classroom is a major teacher-training initiative led by ADAPT, the Research Ireland Centre for AI-Driven Digital Content Technology, and supported by Google. Building on its successful pilot phase, the programme will now upskill an additional 500 post-primary teachers and 6,000 students nationwide, helping schools navigate the ethical, informed, and responsible use of AI. AI Literacy in the Classroom directly addresses urgent skills needs by the Oide teacher development unit, EU education leaders, and teacher unions, ensuring that Ireland’s educators, and their students, are equipped with the necessary skills to thrive in an AI-enabled future.
Speaking at today’s launch, Dara Calleary T.D., Minister for Rural and Community Development and the Gaeltacht, said “I am delighted to be able to announce this funding today for these Dublin City University initiatives. Fiontar agus Scoil na Gaeilge are doing ground-breaking work here with the Gaois projects, as is the ADAPT Research Centre with the work on eStór. As a result of the research and technological development taking place here, Irish is a 21st century language. As the Senior Minister with primary responsibility for the promotion of the Irish language, I am proud of the work being done here as a result of the State’s investment.”
Professor Anne Sinnott, Deputy President DCU, said “As the Gaois and ADAPT projects highlighted today demonstrate, technology presents us with opportunities and provides solutions. And, while these projects address a variety of needs, they all reflect DCU’s mission to transform lives and societies.”
