It's ‘in the name of the fada’, government-style. The state is planning to launch an “urban gaeltacht” strategy aimed at trebling the number of fluent Irish speakers and increasing the amount who are competent in the language by 25% in 20 years.

To achieve this 2030 target Eamon Ó Cuív, the gaeltacht minister, is planning a network of Irish-language cultural centres in cities and towns in order to increase the opportunities people have to speak as Gaeilge. Ó Cuív says he wants Irish-language organisations to follow the GAA’s lead by modernising their facilities and building local centres.

The strategy was devised at a cabinet sub-committee chaired by Brian Cowen, the taoiseach. Currently 85,000 Irish people describe themselves as fluent, daily speakers while 1.6m say they are competent in the language. The government wants these figures to increase to 250,000 and 2m in 20 years.

Use of the language outside the gaeltacht has been increased by the gaelscoil movement, Ó Cuív said. The use of Irish by television presenters and entertainers such as comedian Des Bishop, and broadcasters Hector Ó hEochagáin and Clíodhna Ní Chíosáin, have helped to destigmatise the language, he believes.

Bishop achieved fluency within a year after living in the gaeltacht while making the television series In the Name of the Fada. Last week he met Batt O’Keeffe, the education minister, and agreed to take part in a year-long campaign promoting the language in schools and through websites such as Bebo, Facebook and YouTube.

Ó Cuív wants cities and towns to develop a network of Irish cultural centres similar to Belfast’s Culturlann, a converted church now home to a bookshop, restaurant, art gallery and theatre. A second Irish-language cultural centre, Culturlann Ui Chianain, is due to open shortly in Derry.

“If you want to socialise in Dublin through Irish, there is nowhere to go except the rather dingy place that [Irish language organisation] Conradh na Gaeilge very cleverly set up in the 1970s,” Ó Cuív said. “It has served its purpose, we need to modernise [it] and they’d admit that.”

He said that Conradh, Colaiste na bhFiann, Gael Linn, Comhdhail Naisiunta na Gaeilge and Foras na Gaeilge, the cross-border agency, were among the Irish-language organisations that either own or rent headquarters in Dublin. Conradh na Gaeilge owns a Georgian building on Harcourt Street, but needed government funding last year to undertake structural support measures.

Colaiste na bhFiann, an Irish summer college organisation, owns its own headquarters in the south Dublin suburb of Monkstown. “I have been arguing strongly that there should be one major building that all of those organisation should operate from,” Ó Cuív said.

Ó Cuív said that 93% of the population were favourably disposed to the Irish language but that didn’t mean they were going to make a huge effort to speak it. “The opportunities for using it are limited. If you have an Irish-speaking place where you could go down and have a pint with good company, then your investment in the language through the education system is beginning to pay off.”

The strategy will target areas in cities and towns where there is a critical mass of Irish-language services, such as crèches, mother-and-toddler groups, youth clubs and gaelscoileanna. These areas would be encouraged to apply to government for assistance in building a community or cultural centre for Irish-language activities.

Times Recommends

• 'New York has lost its edge'
• Copenhagen will fail – and quite right too
• More than 17,000 new underwater species found