Brussels, 15.07.2004 (Agence Europe) - The Irish government announced on Wednesday that it would request its European partners to recognise Gaelic as an official working language of the European Union. A press release from the Minister for Irish Affairs (Gaeltacht), Eamon O Cuiv, cited by AFP, points out that Dublin would like to launch a discussion process with the other EU Member States and with the Commission with a view to attaining official working language status within the Union in accordance with Regulation 1/1958. The government considers it abnormal for the languages of the new Member States to be recognised when Gaelic, a language of an “old” Union member, is not. According to the survey carried out in 2002, nearly 1.4 million of the four million Irish “are able” to speak Gaelic and over one quarter of these speakers said they speak Gaelic as their everyday language.