In his opening remarks to the Annual General Meeting of the Celtic League held in Mannin (Isle of Man) this weekend the Celtic League Convenor, Cathal O Luain, described the League’s recommendation for UN NGO (Roster status) as a
significant achievement and he complemented all who had worked on this project particularly the General Secretary.
He told delegates from the six Celtic countries:
“A very significant achievement is the recommendation from the NGO Branch of the UN to grant recognition as an NGO (Roster status) to the League by the United Nations. While others of our Council had input to the process the full credit must go to him for this considerable achievement and he is to be thanked for the huge amount of work and effort it required. We are hopeful for a final successful outcome from this later in July from the Economic and Social Council and must examine now the best ways to maximise on this.”
The Convenor also praised the Leagues information profile and commented on the development of the new website saying:
“A wide range of topics have been dealt with in the press releases issued by the League’s Director of Information, Bernard Moffatt, as can be seen in the Yahoo newsgroups which is linked to the CL website. Aided by Rhisiart, he will have put up well over 300 postings since the last AGM. They cover many aspects of political developments, social, environmental and language matters in the Celtic countries. Human rights issues and current affairs, including some European and International, were covered also.
Since the last AGM a totally new Celtic League Web site has been launched. A lot of the credit for this must go to Assistant Gen Sec. Seanán Ó Coistín who undertook the completion of this task. However much of the text for the various sections of the site was provided by Rhisiart and he had many dealings with the design company. A really significant feature of this new site is that it is multilingual (all Celtic languages, English, French and Spanish) but national branches must rise to the challenge of populating the site fully in their national languages as well as providing historical, political and cultural information along with good reference lists. Seanán also launched an initiative to promote the use of the Celtic languages on the internet. He decided to move on from the League but I would like to take this opportunity to thank him for the work he did as AGS.”
Commenting on the role of the Editor and the publication schedule for CARN the Convenor commended the work of the Editor saying:
“The Editor’s report gives the position on Carn. It is still a struggle to get an even response from all branches on supply of material for each issue and gaps have to be plugged but three good quality issues have been produced in the last year. The recent issue is a good example of improvement in containing more in depth articles and analysis.”
The Convenor also said that most branches and libraries/universities canvassed would like Carn to continue in printed form beyond 2011 and this issue was addressed later in the meeting.
Cathal O Luain concluded his remarks on the work of the Celtic League General Council Officers by thanking the Celtic League Treasurer, Paul Kelly, who he said “works quietly in the background” to ensure that the League remains on a
sound financial footing. However he also cautioned that whilst the Leagues finances are still sound they must be closely monitored as all our work, including the Carn publishing schedule is funded solely from membership
contributions.
The Convenor concluded his report to the AGM by providing a brief overview of the work of branches over the past twelve months and in addition gave an update on political developments in the Celtic countries.
J B Moffatt (Mr)
Director of Information
Celtic League
11/7/10