A NEW community group is being formed, aimed at keeping the Irish Gaelic language alive and well in Oxford.

Posters have been pinned up in pubs and supermarkets and organisers are keen to get the group established as soon as possible.

Dublin-born Loretta Plunkett, 76, has lived in Oxford since 1991.

She said she used to attend Irish language classes in the city, but that several years ago numbers dwindled and the classes stopped.

For years she has travelled to her homeland for three or four weeks annually, to keep up to scratch by staying with an Irish-speaking family.

But - along with friend and fellow Irishman Barry O'Riordan - she has set her sights on starting up a new Irish conversation group in her adopted city. About 3,000 Irish people are thought to live in Oxford.

Mrs Plunkett, of Sandfield Road, Headington, said: "We're hoping to set up a group that could regularly meet for story-telling, poetry, songs and general chat - all in Irish.

"We want to keep the Irish language alive. I think there are a lot of Irish people living in Oxford, but people come over here and lose contact with the culture."

She said the number of people in Ireland itself who spoke Irish was growing, because many schools in the country had started to teach all subjects in Irish, rather than English.

Mrs Plunket said: "Irish culture has a certain charm. It's something that goes back to my childhood and youth.

"My hopes are that we could get a reasonable number of people meeting on a regular basis and speaking the language. We want to get the group established. If we had enough people we could meet now. We could meet in people's houses or in a pub."

Mr O'Riordan, originally from Cork, has lived in Oxford since 1969, when he emigrated because of the lack of job opportunities in Ireland at the time.

He said: "I'm Irish and I also speak the language and taught it for many years. I also sing in Irish and in English.

"There are quite a lot of folk sings and poems in the Irish language. We would have a bit of poetry and hopefully a couple of songs and maybe a bit of story-telling as well.

"I don't think the group will just start like that, but if we get half-a-dozen people together, it will start the ball rolling."

For more details, call Mrs Plunkett on 01865 742924 or Mr O'Riordan on 01865 376107.