Commissioner or Commission?
12 August 2015
This year’s Language Planners Wales annual lecture was delivered by Prof. Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost of Cardiff University’s Welsh Department. His subject was the legal architecture of the current framework of Welsh language legislation.
A well-attended audience of over 60 came to the national Eisteddfod Societies’ Pavilion to listen to Prof. Mac Giolla Chríost share some of the findings of the department’s recent research into Language Commissioners worldwide. His comments engendered a lively debate with Marc Phillips, IAITH Honorary President, as chair.
The lecture posed a few challenging questions around areas such as – the appropriateness of the individual Commissioner model for Wales, the nature of language rights under the current system, the appropriate location of regulatory and promotional functions, along with issues around accountability and the location and efficacy of scrutiny processes.
The lecture forms part of a series of lectures that Prof. Mac Giolla Chríost is in the process of delivering during the year, with the next chapters to be delivered in Bangor and Cardiff during the next academic term. We hope to publish a summary of Prof. Mac Giolla Chríost’s main points on this website in due course.