The Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Éamon O Cuív has said that the current designation of Gaeltacht areas will remain as such for at least two years.
There have been calls for a review of the designations, following recent studies which revealed that the number of Irish speakers in Gaeltacht areas varied greatly.
A linguistic study on the usage of Irish in the Gaeltacht is to be undertaken at a cost of over half a million euro. But this will take two years to complete, and Minister O Cuív said this evening that there would be no change in the meantime.
