Efforts to build world economy limited by lack of languages

7 Mar 2016

BuGI conference in Royal Irish Academy 4th March 2016

Members of the German department were at a conference in the RIA on Friday – see link to Irish Times article:

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/efforts-to-build-world-economy-limited-by-lack-of-languages-1.2562407

The conference was held to mark the 15^th anniversary of the BuGI (Working Group of Third Level Teachers of Business  German in Ireland), of which Siobhan Mortell & Dr Claire O’Reilly are members.  The conference hosted guests from industry, education, tourism and the media.  It focussed on German, but the discussions were very pertinent to the learning of any foreign language, at all levels of our education system, how languages contribute to our economy, and how (to date) the lack of a national language strategy damages Ireland’s competitiveness on the global market.

Note that “Swiss ambassador to Ireland Marie-Claude Meylan said studies had quantified her country’s multilingualism – in particular German, French and Italian – as being responsible for a 10 per cent share of the national economy worth Swiss francs 642 billion (€587 million) in 2014.”