6.9 CROSS-CUTTING INITIATIVES

A number of initiatives will be taken across all the areas of action already set out.

Think Tank
A high-level think tank of creative thinkers and innovators will be constituted on an ad hoc basis from time to time, to develop new approaches to language maintenance and promotion utilising development in the ICT sector.

Portal Site
A portal site for Irish will be developed. This will be designed to provide easy open access to all materials and resources for and in Irish, to include e-learning materials, publications, media, terminology, placenames, academic publications, language networks, digitised sources, and social and professional networks.

EU role for Irish
The Government will ensure that the Irish language is included, as an official working language, in all EU and domestic research and development programmes in the areas of natural language processing, language learning and language technologies. Areas identified as crucial for development include machine translation, optical character recognition, speech technology, language learning programmes, and speech recognition. The Irish language will also take advantage of platforms already developed through research and development programmes for other languages.

Digitisation Programme
A national programme will be created, as part of the celebration of the 1916 Easter Rising, to digitise major Irish language works of national importance with a view to making them accessible by publication on the web. This will build on the work already in hand by Irish Script on Screen and the Digital Humanities Observatory. The Irish language is a source of inspiration for many modern art forms, including literature, music and theatre. However, access to many of the most important manuscripts is not easily available as some are held in repositories in different parts of the world and other important works of literature are out of print. This programme will allow central access to Irish language materials held in archives, repositories, libraries and universities all over the world.