Last week, Lucinda Creighton's Renua, a party unique in the history of Irish politics in that its name makes no sense in either official language of the State, launched its first election manifesto. I made straight for the Irish-language policy section like it was the next episode of Netflix's Making a Murderer.

I had been waiting more than a year for this.

You see, last January, on a rare slow news day in the dog-eat-dog world of online Irish-language journalism, I sent an email to Renua Ireland (then known, equally preposterously, as Reboot Ireland) enquiring about their language policy.

I received a prompt and cheery reply informing me that “all policies were being formulated at present” and that contributions were being sought “from interested individuals and groups in this process”. My details, I was told, would be kept “for future information on Irish language policy and initiatives”.

Impressed by the new political movement’s brazen ‘I dunno! You tell us!’ approach to policy development, I sat back and waited for the latest updates as promised.

They never arrived, and, in a way, I was glad that they didn’t, as last Monday, when Renua finally unveiled their Irish-language policy, I got to enjoy the same spoiler-free sense of excitement as everybody else.

"Our language, Our Heritage," section 18.3 of Renua's Rewarding Work, Rebuilding Trust, began auspiciously enough by pointing out that though Irish "is at a crossroads" we have the power to arrest "its slow downward trend towards extinction".

A little dramatic maybe, but a bracing, matter-of-fact start nonetheless.

That sharp shot of realism was followed nicely by a defiant Obamaesque call to action: “Ireland can and will rediscover the pride it has for its native tongue and the great cultural and artistic history that goes with it.”

Is féidir linn, mar sin, but only if we look to the modern revival of the Welsh language, which, according to Renua, “provides a roadmap for a revitalisation of the Irish language”.

This was disappointing.

The ‘What Would Wales Do?’ approach to the Irish language question is a familiar and tiresome one, especially when its advocates refuse to answer their own question.

It’s true that the Welsh-speaking community have a better-funded television station than us and, in general, they appear to have fewer hang-ups about their language than we do about Irish, but apart from the Super Furry Animals, Gwenno and a more sensible approach to implementing language schemes in the public service, is there really that much to learn from the Welsh that we don’t already know?

What we call the Gaeltacht doesn’t exist in Wales, for example, so it’s unlikely that Renua’s Welsh ‘roadmap’ could offer much guidance in relation to the greatest existential crisis facing Irish – its decline in those areas where it is still the primary language of the community.

At this stage, the lack of detail about the Welsh solution was a cause for concern, along with my instinctive aversion to any talk of ‘roadmaps’ that don’t pertain to actual roads.

Next up was Renua’s “path” to restoring pride in our national language. Apparently the Welsh ‘roadmap’ was no more than a false start, and what the “first step” on this voyage of rediscovery really requires is “a fundamental rethinking of how we teach Irish in our schools”.

It is an old argument, but a valid one, and it is difficult not to share the party’s indignation about the generations of Irish teenagers who leave school “with little more than a smattering of vocabulary and grammar”.

The solution to this “appalling indictment” of our education system?

“To achieve real change, we must blend the traditional and immersive ‘living language’ elements of education with a renewed focus on grammar and accuracy.”

This was a little fuzzy (‘real change’, like ‘roadmap’, is one for the ‘bladar bingo’ card), but I found it interesting, nonetheless.

At a time when it is considered unfashionable, foolish and even dangerous, to use words like “grammar” and “accuracy” when discussing the teaching of Irish, the indifference to conventional wisdom was refreshing.

Were Renua about to surprise us with a proposal for a second, more challenging, Leaving Cert syllabus, one designed to meet the needs of native and fluent speakers, who are currently forced to debase themselves before the Sraith Pictiúr?

Sadly, it was not to be, and just a few ripe paragraphs and 169 words after it began, that’s where section 18.3 of Renua’s manifesto, “Our language, Our Heritage,” became Section 19 of Renua’s manifesto, “Foreign Policy and Defence”.

More a sketch of an idea for a policy than a policy, “Our language, Our Heritage” left us none the wiser about Renua’s views on any of the issues facing the Irish language.

Do they have a policy in relation to Irish?

Well, we know they’re ‘for it’, and ‘more of it’, if possible.

In their favour, Renua can’t be accused of promising anything they can’t deliver.

‘Real change’, whatever else it might be, is difficult to quantify.

- Seán Tadhg Ó Gairbhí is the editor of the online Irish-language news service Tuairisc.ie. This is the first in a series of articles for Treibh reviewing the main political parties Irish language policies for the general election