Éamon de Buitléar on his upbringing in an Irish speaking family and the importance of wildlife conservation.
Film-maker and environmentalist Éamon de Buitléar is concerned politicians do not take wildlife conservation seriously,
Conservation is about survival and it's about economics, it’s not a cuddle bunny, a fancy bird, it is a very serious pursuit.
He believes politicians need to heed the expertise of Irish biologists and zoologists,
By our carelessness, we are losing a vast amount of animal and plant communities which would be valuable to us in future years.
He believes local authorities are often at fault with many people blaming pollution on the farming community. While they are often responsible,
The farming community is locked into a system, they are locked into a political system rather than an ecological and an economic farming policy.
The conversation takes a lighter turn when Éamon de Buitléar describes growing up in a Gaelic-speaking family in Bray, County Wicklow. His parents Colonel Éamon de Buitléar and Nóra (née O'Brien), raised their seven children through Irish, insisting other family members did not use English in their presence.
Éamon de Buitléar’s father spoke the Irish language fluently, learning it phonetically in six months from the teacher and translator Tómas Page in Heytesbury Street, Dublin. Éamon de Buitléar’s mother was less adept, only using the future tense,
It was a great way as we were always looking forward.
This episode of 'The Late Late Show’ was broadcast on 17 November 1984. The presenter is Gay Byrne.
