Gaelic is clearly undergoing a revival, with a new Gaelic primary school thriving in Inverness and the BBC Alba channel attracting 600,000 viewers in its first week. Plans are also afoot to establish Gaelic pre-school groups in the region.

This success is based on demand and a genuine desire by individuals to speak Gaelic as a second or third language. Government has helped by providing resources and establishing the framework necessary for these developments to take place.

There are some who see any such spending as a waste of money. Gaelic is a dead language, they insist, and should be allowed to wither. They also question how widely the language was spoken, even at its height, and argue it is now being promoted in areas such as Caithness where it has no historic roots.

In the other corner stand those who say not enough is being done and that we should not rest until Gaelic is heard daily on our streets, in our shops and at our work places.

Finlay MacLeod is amongst this number. He is behind the idea of establishing communities, including one of 1000 people somewhere in the Inverness area, where Gaelic would be the first language. A meeting is taking place in the city next month to gauge support for the proposal, which has apparently attracted interest from the United States and Canada. Mr MacLeod fears that unless it is spoken socially, Gaelic will not develop and this kind of initiative is required to kick start the process.

Setting aside the merits of his argument for a moment, the practicalities of establishing such a community would be enormous. It is difficult to imagine any private developer being involved without the costs being underwritten, so vast sums of money would be required. Then there is the question of who is likely to buy a house knowing they would only be able to sell to someone who already spoke, or was willing to learn, Gaelic?

A development of several hundred homes would require services such as shops and possibly a medical practice. Would these businesses also have to use Gaelic as a first language, and if so could people be found to run them?

First though, we have to decide, as a society, whether such a concept is desirable or whether it would be divisive. Arthur Cormack, deputy chairman of the Scottish Government's Bord na Gaidhlig, fears that such a community could become a ghetto and would prefer to see the use of Gaelic normalised across the country. Yet the same could have been said of Gaelic schools, but they found a market and are now generally accepted.

Ultimately, Gaelic will only grow and prosper if people want it to. We have some misgivings about the idea of Gaelic-only communities and do not believe they should receive any public funding, However, if Mr MacLeod manages to overcome the considerable obstacles in his path and finds sufficient demand and resources to make such developments a reality, then they ought to be allowed to proceed.

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